Chapter One Midsummer’s Day 1889 #2
Toby reached out to grab a slice of bread but his mother slapped his hand away.
‘Sit down. Eat a proper breakfast. You can’t study on an empty stomach.’
He pulled up a chair opposite his father.
There was just enough room for the four of them to sit down together, one at each side of the table, knees meeting in the middle.
The parlour was their best room. It had a flagstone floor, green wainscotting, and a tidy hearth with a ring for the kettle.
The fire had a settee to either side where they sat in the evenings, Mona sewing something, David reading the paper or carefully brushing his jacket and hat.
Watercolours of plants and insects hung on the walls; a precious photograph of David’s parents sat on the mantelpiece, along with an inherited silver snuff-box and Mona’s Golden Jubilee souvenirs: three pressed-glass dishes, all with Victoria’s cameo and crest. The cat was asleep in his customary sunny spot on the windowsill, tucked between the spider plants.
Next door, a coal-burning range and copper boiler for hot water were wedged into a far older inglenook, crusted with centuries of soot.
A tin bath hung from a hook on the wall, and a large dresser held crockery, cutlery, and all the other things Mona used to conjure up their meals – Oxo powder, black treacle, Lea that the times she’d played with him in the village she’d probably done so on the sly; and that she must be lonely.
He remembered Theo’s elder sister, Amy, as a smiling chatterbox whose prettiness had abashed him.
Then she’d died, and Toby had known it was a terrible shame without really thinking about how sad it must be for Theo, or how odd to be the only child in such a huge house.
Still, he’d also felt a prickle of resentment towards her, sitting up there in her frilly dress, with her white shoelaces and her hair in ribbons.
He hadn’t understood why, or even tried to; he’d merely stopped waving and turned away.
Two-thirds of the way up the hill on the other side of the water meadows, Toby paused to watch a pair of banded demoiselles, flying in urgent spirals with their brilliant blue bodies catching the light.
David caught up and leaned on his stick, breathing hard.
‘Fighting?’ Toby said. ‘Or in love, do you think?’
‘It’s often hard to tell, in the young.’
‘How do you know they’re young?’ Toby countered. ‘Might be an old married couple.’
‘Alas, nature tends not to allow such gorgeous things to grow old,’ David said. ‘Come along. Herodotus won’t read himself.’
‘It’s Euclid today, in fact.’
‘Ah. More dratted triangles? Bad luck, my boy.’
At the top of the hill Toby looked back across the valley again, at Hallewell’s dun-coloured cottages. He liked to see the place he’d grown up in like this – small and hidden away, while the rest of the vast, wide world lay waiting. Waiting for him.
Theo was often out in the garden of Hallewell House, and even more often up at the castle: a solitary figure, lately grown willowy and almost graceful despite her untidy hair and practical boots.
They saw far less of one another these days.
Toby had serious work to do, while she apparently floated through her days, obsessed with her family’s legends and flowery old Tennyson. All that thou-ing and hath-ing.
Then he remembered that it was Midsummer’s Day, and he’d had a note a while back inviting him to a midnight gathering, the purpose of which remained a mystery.
Nonsense cooked up by Theo’s overactive imagination, no doubt; like the time she’d made their group of Sunday School companions lie in a circle around the spring, holding hands and chanting, for fully twenty minutes.
He’d stolen a glance at Theo’s face: eyes screwed shut, brows pinched, actually expecting something magical to happen.
He really didn’t need a midnight gathering. What he needed was sleep, and to wake up early, and to study. But just then a whisper of breeze brought a gentle shiver, and he suspected he would do as she asked.