Chapter 20 #2
Matilda looked at Alexandra. A question in her eyes.
Alexandra opened her arms and Matilda climbed in, folding herself against her mother's chest with the neatness of a child who had been waiting to be invited.
Florence watched them from her chair, still eating her toast, her blue eyes moving between the two pairs of mother and child.
She didn't move. She chewed. She swallowed.
She wiped her mouth with her napkin the way she'd been taught.
Then she stood up and walked around the table and squeezed herself onto Erin's lap beside Frank, her small body fitting into the space between Frank's sprawl and the arm of the chair, her hand reaching across to hold Alexandra's free hand.
Five of them, two chairs, too many limbs and not enough space, and Audrey's head emerging from beneath the table to rest on Florence's knee, and the kitchen full of morning light and the smell of eggs and the sound of a family that had been broken apart and was being put back together.
The morning stretched on. They finished breakfast. They washed up, all five of them, which turned the washing up into a production that involved more water on the floor than in the sink and Frank dropping a plate and Matilda finding the incident deeply amusing while Florence dried each item with the focus of a child performing surgery.
They walked to the stables. The children ran ahead, even Matilda, who didn't usually run, was jogging beside Florence, her hand in Florence's hand, and Frank was sprinting ahead and turning back to check they were following.
Percy was in his paddock. He was a Welsh Mountain pony, dun-coloured, patient-eyed, with a white blaze and a temperament so steady that the grooms called him The Professor.
When Florence climbed the fence and called his name he walked over with the measured, deliberate pace of a pony who knew he was important, and Florence buried her face in his mane and stood there, breathing him in, and the sound she made was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob but something between the two that made Erin's eyes sting.
"He smells the same," Florence said, her voice muffled by pony hair. "He smells exactly the same."
They stood at the paddock fence and watched Florence with Percy and the sun was warm on their shoulders and the dogs were running across the lawn, Audrey lumbering behind the younger dogs, her long legs eating up the ground despite her age, and the castle rose behind them, grey and solid and unchanged, and Erin leaned against the fence and let the ordinary beauty of a summer morning at home settle into her bones.
Alexandra leaned against her. Smaller than her, the length of her body warm against Erin's side. "You need to sleep," she said quietly.
"So do you."
"I will. Later. But you've been running on nothing for six days. You need to stop."
"I will. When I'm ready."
"You're ready. You just don't know it yet."
They were still standing like that, leaning against each other, watching Florence lead Percy around the paddock by his headcollar while Frank trotted alongside pretending to be a horse and Matilda sat on the top rail of the fence offering commentary, when Vic appeared.
She came around the corner of the stable block at her usual pace, which was somewhere between a walk and a sprint, her long hair tangled from the wind, a t shirt that probably used to be yellow but was now a shade between yellow and grey and covered in horse hair and unknown stains and her face carrying the particular expression she wore when she was trying to be casual about something she felt deeply.
Hyzenthlay was beside her, not the half-step behind of a child following a parent but the even, parallel stride of a girl who walked beside rather than behind.
Ten years old with her mother's hazel eyes, fierce intellect, and a self-possession that belonged to someone three times her age.
"All right," Vic said. She stopped at the fence.
Looked at Florence in the paddock. Her eyes went bright and her jaw worked and she pressed her lips together and breathed in through her nose and the effort of not crying was written across her face like weather on a hillside.
"Right. Good. She's here. She's on the pony. Good."
"Good morning, Vic."
"Shut up. I'm fine. I'm completely fine.
" She was not fine. She was gripping the top rail of the fence with both hands and her knuckles were white and her chin was trembling and she was watching Florence with the intensity of a woman who had carried the guilt of losing this child for six days and was seeing, for the first time, that the damage might not be permanent.
Florence looked up from Percy. “Auntie Vic!" She waved, one arm high, the enthusiastic wave of a child greeting a favourite adult. "Come and see Percy! He missed me!"
Vic's composure broke. She pressed her hand over her mouth, the same gesture Julia had made in the safe house hallway, and her shoulders shook once, hard.
Then she climbed the fence, not through the gate, over the fence, in one athletic vault that reminded everyone present that she had been an Olympic champion, and crossed the paddock and picked Florence up and hugged her with the ferocity of a woman who needed the child to know she was sorry.
"I missed you, kiddo. I missed you so bloody much."
"I missed you too, Auntie Vic. Did you look after Percy?”
"Every single day. I brought him an apple every morning.”
Julia arrived five minutes later, walking up the path from the castle with her phone in one hand and a travel mug of coffee in the other, her dark hair neat, her brown eyes soft with something that the last week had laid bare.
She didn't climb the fence. She stood beside Alexandra and Erin and watched the paddock, where Vic was now giving Florence a riding lesson on Percy - bareback and with no bridle- but luckily Percy was the kind of pony who was plodding calmly around the paddock as Florence’s lean bare legs in shorts hung against his sides.
Meanwhile Frank tried to convince Matilda to let him ride one of the other ponies and Hyzenthlay stood at the paddock rail, watching everything with her hazel eyes.
"The PM's office has been briefed," Julia said quietly. "Charlotte sends her personal congratulations and says she'll come to the castle whenever you're ready. Mills has a preliminary report. I've asked her to hold it until tomorrow. Today is yours."
"Thank you, Julia."
Julia took a sip of her coffee. She watched Vic standing close to Florence and Percy and steady her with both hands and say something that made Florence laugh, a bright, clear sound that carried across the paddock and landed in Erin's chest like sunlight.
"She seems well," Julia said. "Remarkably well."
"Children are resilient."
"Yes. And her mothers are fierce."
Erin looked at Julia. Julia looked back.
The woman who had held the logistics together for six days, who had coordinated convoys and managed media and stayed up until two in the morning on phones and then woken at five to do it again.
The woman who had cried in the hallway at the sight of Florence and then dried her eyes and picked up her phone and started organising the journey home.
Julia, who was married to Vic, who was standing in a paddock covered in horse hair and crying into a pony's mane while Florence patted her head.
"Thank you," Erin said. "For everything this week. For holding it together when the rest of us couldn't."
Julia's composure flickered. Her mouth pressed into a line that was not quite a smile and not quite a grimace but was the closest Julia came to visible emotion in broad daylight. "That's my job."
"It's more than your job. And you know it."
Julia didn't answer. She took another sip of coffee and watched the paddock and the flicker settled back behind the mask of professional calm, but her eyes were bright and her hand, the one not holding the coffee, found the fence rail and gripped it, and Erin let the silence be.
Hyzenthlay climbed down from the fence rail and walked over to where the adults stood. She looked up at Erin with those big eyes and all of Vic's intensity, and said, with the measured gravity of a child who had been holding information for a week: “Did it help? What I told you about Captain Ward."
Erin crouched to Hyzenthlay's eye level. "It helped more than you know. You were very brave to tell me."
"I wasn't brave. I was observant. Brave would have been telling you sooner." She paused. "I should have told you sooner."
"You told me when it mattered. That's what counts."
Hyzenthlay considered this with the seriousness of a child weighing the philosophical merit of an adult's reassurance.
Then she nodded, once, and walked back to the fence to join the others, and Erin watched her go and thought: Eight years old.
She noticed what trained intelligence officers missed.
She noticed, and she told, and it changed everything.
The sun was high now. Mid-morning, the shadows shortening, the air warming to the gentle heat of an English summer day that would peak in the afternoon and fade to a long, golden evening.
Florence was on Percy. Frank was chasing one of the dogs across the lawn.
Matilda was sitting in the grass making a daisy chain with the concentration of a jeweller setting diamonds.
Vic was leaning against the paddock fence beside Julia, their shoulders touching, Julia's hand finding Vic's and holding it the way Alexandra's hand found Erin's, without looking, without thinking, the automatic reaching of a person whose body knew where its partner was.
Alexandra turned to Erin. Her blue eyes were serious beneath the brightness, the Queen surfacing briefly through the mother. "I know there are things to be done. I know you know it too. Cecilia. Arthur. The investigation. All of it."
"Yes."
"It can wait one day. Can't it?"
Erin looked at the paddock. Florence was laughing.
The sound carried across the summer air, high and clear and unshadowed, the laugh of a child who had not yet understood what had been done to her.
Tomorrow there would be meetings. Confrontations.
Hard decisions about people who wore crowns and carried titles and had used both as shields while they stole a child.
Tomorrow the machinery of justice would start turning and it would grind slowly and it would require things from both of them that would be exhausting and painful and necessary.
But today Florence was on her pony and Frank was covered in grass stains and Matilda was threading daisies and the sun was warm and her wife was beside her and the dogs were running across the lawn of a castle that felt, for the first time in a week, like home.
"It can wait," Erin said. "Today we're just a family."
Alexandra leaned into her. Erin's arm went around her shoulders, pulling her close, and they stood at the paddock fence in the summer sun and watched their children play, and the world outside the castle walls could wait.