Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Three
Through the crack in the wardrobe door I see the shadows of moonlight slowly creep across the floor. I hear the distant screech of an owl in the woods and the light scampering of mice beneath the floorboards, but other than those nocturnal sounds, the house is silent. The sheer force of my resolve prevents me from falling asleep. I have one chance and one chance only to find out what happens to Felix Pengower, and I will not fail. I expect an intruder to come into the room and I focus on the door. I wait for it to open. It’s a surprise, therefore, when Felix himself wakes up and climbs out of bed. I expect he wants to use the chamber pot. I’m astonished when he makes his way to the door. The moon is full. Indeed, tonight it is a fat, luminous moon. It fills the bedroom with a translucent light, as if we are underwater. As if we are underwater but able to see every object, clear and sharp and bright.
Felix makes for the door. He looks small and vulnerable in his sailor-suit pyjamas. My heart lurches with dread, but I know I mustn’t do anything to stop him.
I get up and follow him out of the door. He turns towards the servants’ staircase. I imagine he’s going to Gwen’s bedroom. He has wandered there before, many times. In spite of his mother putting a stop to it, he’s determined to see his nurse. She’s been sick and he’s been denied her. Tonight, he wants to steal into her bed and be enveloped in her warm, maternal embrace. I feel an anguish almost too much to bear, but I know what I have to do, and I walk on.
By the light of the moon, he treads confidently. Silently, I walk behind him. He doesn’t sense me here. I’m as quiet as a mouse. He climbs the narrow wooden stairs, one at a time, holding the banister and pausing after each step. My heart goes out to him, this little person climbing to seek comfort, ignorant of the fact that he won’t find it.
He pads along the corridor to Gwen’s bedroom, scampering quietly over the shafts of silver that beam in through the small windows and slice through the darkness. He knows the way and trots with confidence. The last time I saw her she was feeling better, sitting up in bed, happy to have discovered that she wasn’t pregnant. She wasn’t sick at all, simply sick in the heart because she can’t have the man she loves because he’s already taken.
I wonder how this child can come to harm in Gwen’s bedroom. Gwen loves him. She would give her life for him. How is it that tonight, as he makes his way to her room, he vanishes, never to be seen again? Surely, he’s safe in her loving arms?
At last, he reaches her door and hovers there in a puddle of moonshine, uncertain suddenly. The door is ajar. Inside, there are hushed voices. I stand behind him, in the bathroom doorway that is cast in shadow. He doesn’t sense me here. It’s as if I don’t exist.
I listen to the voices through the gap in the door.
You know I can’t marry you, Gwen.
But you don’t love her.
Love! You know nothing of love.
I know I love you, John.
Listen, let’s not talk of marriage. Let’s just enjoy each other. Why do you have to ruin it? You always have to ruin it.
I’m not ruining it. I just deserve more.
I’m risking my job coming up here to see you. Isn’t that enough?
Well, I’m risking mine too. If we’re found out, we’ll both be dismissed.
Felix pushes the door.
Master Felix. What are you doing up here? Go downstairs at once. I can tell by Gwen’s tone of voice that it gives her pain to send the child away.
What’s the boy doing here? What’s he heard? He’ll sneak, he will. How much have you heard? What have you heard? Tell me, you little blighter! What have you heard?
Lay off him, John. He’s only little. Go back to your room now, Master Felix. Be a good boy.
Felix begins to cry. My heart freezes. Is John Snathe going to kill him? Surely, he wouldn’t hurt a child?
Lay off him, I tell you. Stop!
I’m not having him sneaking on me. You sneak on me and I’ll cut out your tongue, do you hear me? I’ll cut out your tongue so you’ll never speak again.
I hold my breath. But to my relief the child runs out of the room with a sob. He hurries down the corridor and I lift my nightdress and gown and pursue him. Moonlight, pouring in through the small attic windows, lights his way back. He stumbles down the stairs, quietly crying. I fear he might fall. His white hand holds the banister, but he’s trembling and unsteady. I expect him to fall, and through my mind passes a possible scenario – that he falls and breaks his neck and Gwen and John have to hide his body. But I’m wrong. He makes his way down safely. When he gets to the bottom, he hesitates. He doesn’t turn right towards his bedroom, but left towards his mother’s. I follow him at a safe distance. He is, indeed, headed to his mother’s bedroom even though she has forbidden him to go there. I imagine that was a rule she made when she started her affair. She didn’t want anyone to discover her absence. I imagine it’s been years since Ivan Pengower visited her bedroom. But Felix is making his way to her bedroom none the less. He’s frightened and he wants his mother.
He stops suddenly in his tracks. At the far end of the corridor is the faint glow of a gas lamp turned down low. His mother’s unmistakable figure is briefly silhouetted against it. She turns the corner and the glow recedes, her shadow sliding down the wall after her. Felix takes a breath, gathers himself, and then scampers in pursuit. He’s no longer crying. Making sure that I’m a safe distance behind him, I walk silently on.
The house is quiet, not even the mice can be heard scratching beneath the floorboards. All is still. I follow at a distance. Felix descends the grand staircase, trailing the lamplight. He doesn’t cry out for his mama. Perhaps he’s afraid that he’ll be in trouble.
Felix reaches the library. Large silver squares shimmer on the floor where the moonlight shines through the big, mullioned windows. The room is as bright as day, but the watery blue light is eerie and confusing. It has a dreamlike quality. But this is not a dream. For Felix and his mother, this scenario is all too real.
Felix hovers in the doorway as his mother pulls the lever to open the secret door and then disappears inside. I imagine this must fascinate him, a hidden door in the bookcase. The boy walks slowly towards it. Curious. Fearless now, and I remember how delighted he was by the tunnels at the mine. How thrilled he was that his brother was frightened while he wasn’t. This door, concealed in the bookcase, must be magical for him. By the way he’s striding towards it, light on his feet, a bounce in his step, I sense that inquisitiveness has overridden his fear. He wants to be a mole and he’s not afraid of the dark.
Cordelia has left the door ajar. This is a fatal mistake. This, I imagine, seals the child’s fate. If only that door was closed. How different things would be. I feel the frustration burning in my chest.
Felix slips through the gap and makes his way down the steps. I plunge into the darkness after him. The tunnel is lit by the gas lamp that Cordelia has left at the other end, presumably to light her return. It burns like a star and Felix is drawn towards it. Outside, she doesn’t need it, for the moon is full.
When I get to the stairs at the end my attention is diverted by Felix’s bracelet. It has come off his wrist and is lying across my path on the paving stones. It resembles a thin little snake. My instinct is to pick it up, but I pull back. I mustn’t change anything. I must leave everything exactly as it is. But my throat tightens with anguish, as if an invisible hand is squeezing it. I want to take Felix by the hand and lead him back to bed, to safety, but I cannot. I must not. I have to see this nightmare through, and keep my attention focused on the reason I am here.
I follow Felix up the steps and into the shed. He’s hurrying out in pursuit of his mother, around the back of the shed and into the copse behind it. I haven’t been this way before, but I soon recognise the landscape. We’re making for the wood.
There’s something mystical about the moon tonight. It’s big and round, shining brightly in a deep indigo sky studded with stars. The trees are silhouetted against it, strange and otherworldly, swaying gently in the balmy breeze. Soft light is fragmented by the branches into hundreds of milky beams, which act as spotlights, shining onto the ground, illuminating our path, showing Felix the way. Drawing him towards his destiny, and me to my purpose. I sense it is almost done.
Shortly we come upon a cottage, snuggled in a clearing. It’s a romantic-looking building with pointy gables and latticed windows. The spine of the roof sags, as if it’s old and weary and taking a rest. As Cordelia approaches it, the door opens and Pascoe Bray stands in the frame, ready to greet her.
Pascoe Bray is her lover. I never guessed. But I suddenly recall the many times he was present, and Cordelia Pengower’s happiness. It hits me now, the realisation that she was always happy when he was around.
Felix stops short.
I stop behind him, hidden behind an ash.
We both watch as Pascoe pulls Cordelia into his arms and kisses her. Entwined, they retreat inside, and the door closes on their adultery.
The child seems too shocked to cry. He stands there, staring in bewilderment, not knowing what to do. My heart breaks for him, this little person, alone in the night with no one to turn to.
How appalling it must be to be betrayed not only by his nurse, but by his mother too.
Felix goes to the window and peeps in through the glass. It’s human nature to be drawn to things we know we shouldn’t see, and to watch in horror and be repelled. Felix remains there, standing on his tiptoes, his nose pressed against the glass, for a moment only. Something he sees sends him into a panic because he springs away as if the windowsill he’s holding onto suddenly scalds his fingers. He turns on his heels and runs.
He doesn’t return the way he came. He runs in another direction entirely, stumbling over fallen branches and fighting his way through the bracken, which is thick and tall. He runs blindly, clearly lost. I struggle to keep up with him, my long nightdress getting caught in the undergrowth and snagging on the brambles.
Shortly, he slows down to a walk. His panic abates and he begins to look around him and trail his hands over the vegetation. He stops here and there, detained by a sound in the bushes perhaps, and crouches down to search for things in the grass. An owl hoots, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Perhaps he’s living his fantasy of being a fox or a mole or a rabbit. Maybe he’s consoling himself with that and sinking into the comfort of play.
I cannot imagine what harm can come to him here, in this wood, unless he stumbles across vagrants. I remember the two I saw at the chapel and shiver. One of them was carrying a knife. Is that what happens? He comes across vagrants and they seize the opportunity and take him? It seems implausible, somehow.
Felix is now pretending to be an animal. He’s on all fours and he’s found a giant laurel. He crawls beneath it. I hide behind a tree trunk and watch him disappear.
I wonder what he’s doing in there. I hear rustling, a murmur and then a thud. The thud turns my blood to ice. It was like something dropped from a height. What on earth is inside that bush?
I remain for a long while behind the tree, petrified with anxiety. What was that sound? Did I imagine it? Was it something else, far away? A branch falling or something? Or was it Felix? If I crawl under that bush, will Felix, pretending to be a fox, see me? Will I interfere and alter the chain of events? Or is there a hole and he’s fallen down it? If he’s fallen down a hole, can I walk away and leave him there? Can I leave him to die?
Is he dead already?
My breathing grows shallow. My heart races. My body bristles with fear. My legs weaken and shake. I’m too frightened to do anything. I remain paralysed to the spot, unable to leave it.
I hear nothing.
My heart lurches. It’s seized by a cold and icy hand. It’s happening. It’s happening now.
Felix has been swallowed into the bush. I have to go in after him and find out what’s there.
I force myself to take a step and then another. I crouch down and part the branches of laurel. Inside, on the earth, is a grey flagstone. It’s mottled with lichen and moss, like a gravestone. Beyond it are narrow steps. I know at once that it is a priest hole. Another priest hole. This place is indeed riddled with them. I doubt very much that anyone knows it’s here. It might have saved the lives of priests in Elizabethan times, but it’s taken Felix’s.
I kneel and crawl on in. There are steps and they appear to lead down into a dark hole. I cannot bear to look down it. Even if I could, it would be too dark to see anything. I suspect there was once a ladder, but that must have rotted centuries ago. It’s a deep hole and Felix has fallen down it.
I crawl out. My mind is spinning. I want to throw up. My head tells me I have to leave, but my heart is begging me to stay. To call for help. To rescue him. I could never have predicted this.
No one has taken him.
No one has murdered him.
He’s fallen down a priest hole, by himself, in a horrible accident, and there’s no one around to save him.
No one, but me.
Oh, if only his father hadn’t taken him down the mine. If he hadn’t encouraged him to be a mole. If he hadn’t celebrated his bravery in those tunnels. If his mother hadn’t forbidden him to go to her room. If she hadn’t left the secret door ajar. If the child hadn’t had a fascination for making dens and exploring tunnels. If only …
I remain standing there, as still as if I were made out of marble. I move nothing. Only my pulse throbs in my temples and my heart thuds in my chest.
I can alert Cordelia and Pascoe and they can rescue him.
I can.
But I won’t.
I know I won’t, because if I do, I will change the future – again. I have already changed it once with Cavill and who knows what that will do to the lives of others? One small flutter of the wings of a butterfly can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. What hurricane have I caused by saving Cavill? What hurricane might I cause by saving Felix?
There is nothing I can do. Nothing.
With a sob, I turn and walk away.
It’s the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
I return through the wood, my whole being heavy with sorrow. My legs feel like lead, my heart like a pebble. I ache all over. I can’t bear to think of that child, stuck in the hole. I hope he died instantly. I hope he didn’t suffer. Please God, don’t allow him to suffer.
No wonder they never find him. That hole was built to be hidden. Hidden it is, and so is Felix.
I make my way back through the tunnel, leaving the gas lamp and the bracelet exactly where they are. Cordelia will find that bracelet and know that her son followed her. She will know that she is to blame for his disappearance, and she will never forgive herself. That’s why she’s stuck, refusing to move on. Because she knows what she did. Because she believes she is to blame.
My job is done.
I return to my room, undress and take to my bed.
I leave Hermione safely there, beneath the quilt. She won’t remember anything of the last eleven days. Her amnesia will be put down to shock, I expect. And life will go on.
As I close my eyes and prepare to slide back, to leave this time for ever, I think about the real Hermione. Was she dear to Cavill as she was dear to Cordelia? Was it written in the Great Book of Life that she and Cavill loved each other? After all, didn’t he say that he fell in love with me – with Hermione – the moment he laid eyes on me in the hall? Before he’d even got to know me? Perhaps he and Hermione were destined to be together. Maybe they fell in love. They might even have intended to marry. Did I simply step into her shoes and live her life? Was the life that I borrowed for eleven days not so very far from the one that was really lived? Or did Cavill and I, Pixie, connect on a deeper level, on the level of the soul? Did we have something timeless, something unique?
I will never know.
I listen to my breathing and drift deep into trance. I feel myself slipping away. The vibration murmurs in my ears. My limbs grow heavy. It is time. My job is done.