Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MONDAY
Are the English a bit loosey-goosey about giving directions or are we Americans feeble about following them?
Because we are completely lost. We’ve emerged from a dense, damp woods and are standing at the edge of a field trying to determine the difference between “bear right,” “bear slightly right,” and “bear right but pull gradually away.” Even if I weren’t hungover, I’d be lost.
“It says here we’re to head toward a copse of trees,” says Amity, looking down at the directions she’d been given by Constable Bucket.
Wyatt points to a row of skinny trees at the bottom of the field. “Is that a copse?”
“Isn’t that a strip?” Amity says. “A copse is maybe more like a little grove?”
“Can we rest?” I ask. “Please?”
I sit down on a fallen log. I’ve finished my water bottle, and, according to the directions for the scenic route that we think we’re following, Hadley Hall, the home of Lady Magnolia Blanders, is another mile away. My head is pounding.
“We have to find a copse, cross a meadow, and go through a stile.”
“What, pray tell, is a stile?” Wyatt says.
“It’s an opening, like a narrow passage or some steps, that we can go through but animals can’t,” Amity says.
“It might even be a wooden turnstile, which I guess is where the name comes from. Or maybe vice versa.” She turns back to the directions.
“After that we follow a lane that is not a path and traverse a woodland. Which may or may not be the same as a woods.”
“Cocktails are dead to me,” I say. “I’m never drinking again.”
Did I embarrass myself last night?
“Please,” Wyatt says. “We’ve all been there—you, me, and the Bohemian waxwing.”
I put a hand to my forehead to shield the sun from my eyes and look up at Wyatt.
“It’s a snazzy little bird that tends to overindulge,” he says. “When they eat too many fermented berries they get drunk and fly into buildings and fences.”
A sharp, high-pitched chirping right above us. And then a quick rat-a-tat-tat that goes directly into my head like a nail gun.
“Please make it stop,” I say.
“Great spotted woodpecker,” Wyatt says.
Amity puts her hands on her hips. “Onward. Lady Magnolia awaits.” She points to some trees in the distance. “I think it’s that way.”
We cross a meadow and follow the path into the trees, which Amity declares a woodland, where we come upon an astonishing sight.
As far as we can see, blanketing the ground and circling the tree trunks, are bright purple-blue flowers that come nearly to our knees.
The wind blows, and they bend in unison as gently as seaweed in shallow water.
“How beautiful,” I say.
Amity clears her throat and recites:
The Bluebell is the sweetest flower
That waves in summer air:
Its blossoms have the mightiest power
To soothe my spirit’s care.
“Who’s that?” Wyatt asks.
“Emily Bronte,” Amity says.
“The creator of Heathcliff?” I’m astonished. “So by the time she penned that poem, the depression had lifted?”
“Oh, no,” Amity says. “It gets much darker.”
I take a step off the path so I can be surrounded by this ocean of color.
My mother used to tell me a bedtime story, one that went on for years, that took place in a country village surrounded by hills of bluebells that bloomed briefly every spring.
All the village children would scamper out to see them before they faded and died, singing a nursery rhyme that was gibberish to me— bluebells, cockle shells, eevy, ivy, over.
“Are you okay?” Amity asks.
“The flowers reminded me of something.”
I tell them about the country village with the bluebells in my mother’s story, and how I never expected to see those flowers in real life.
“Maybe that’s why she wanted you to come here,” Wyatt says.
“My mother could be flighty, but she would not spend thousands of dollars to show me some flowers, no matter how pretty.”
When we come out of the woods, we follow the path across another meadow, this one a cow pasture.
The animals ignore us, but their presence is jarring after the peaceful landscape of the bluebells.
It’s so strange walking through someone’s property.
I keep expecting a farmer with a rifle to pop out from behind a tree and tell us to get off his damn land.
But we’re not in America anymore; this is Britain, which Amity says has ninety-one thousand miles of footpaths, often crossing private land, on which the public has the legally protected right to walk and stop briefly to admire the view.
There are also bridle paths, where you can ride a horse or a bicycle.
The paths go back centuries, I suppose so people could get to the market or church and young women in books could take bracing walks and arrive at their destination with mud on their hems and color in their cheeks.
We cross another field, this one dotted with bored-looking sheep, which seem to be the only kind.
My headache starts to dissipate. It feels good to walk the countryside like this, to not only admire the landscape but be part of it.
As we traipse through meadows and fields, I start to feel steadier and stronger.
I read once that the cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea—and that may be true, but walking is setting me to rights.
It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for only three days.
There’s an ease I feel with Wyatt and Amity that often eludes me with people at home.
And this landscape is so soothing, though like nowhere I’ve ever been.
It’s a pleasant kind of disorientation. This must be why people travel.
Tiny yellow flowers bloom in the grass. The air smells sweet.
The breeze is soft, even ticklish. In the distance, a tall church spire rises from the trees.
“The village in my mother’s story had a church with a crooked spire,” I say. “It was straight until a devil kicked it or something.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a church with a crooked spire not far from here,” Amity says. “I read about it in a guidebook.”
“Engineering wasn’t so great, back in the day,” I say. “There are probably lots of churches with crooked spires.”
Amity takes out her phone. She reads for a bit and then says, “Look at this.”
It’s a photograph of an old church, with a spire that’s twisted like soft ice cream and leaning to one side.
“That’s the Church of St. Mary and All Saints in Chesterfield, not far from here,” she says.
“Otherwise known as the Church with the Crooked Spire. Let’s see.
The twisting can be explained by the physics, blah blah blah, lead and wood, the sun heating the lead covering on one side, blah blah.
But there are also less scientific explanations. ”
“Such as?” I ask.
“One says that the devil sneezed while holding on to the spire and twisted it in one go. Another is that the devil wrapped his tail around the spire and then tried to fly away with it. And one says that a devil got stung by a bee and it hurt so much that he flung out his leg and kicked the spire.”
“This is the same spire?” Wyatt says.
“What?” I don’t get what he’s talking about.
“That’s three things,” Wyatt says emphatically. “The Queen’s swans, bluebells, and the church with a crooked spire. All things in your mother’s stories that have a connection to this area. Don’t you find that odd?”
“I mean, maybe? But it’s probably just coincidence.”
“I don’t think so,” Wyatt says. “I think your mother knew this area, maybe even Willowthrop itself, and that’s why she wanted to come. You need to keep a list—note down anything that links your mother to something here.”
I loved my mother’s bedtime stories, both because they were fanciful and because they were long.
She’d never leave in the middle of a story, and as long as she was talking, I knew she was staying put.
I’d ask lots of questions so that she’d go into more detail and conjure more fabulous tales.
My favorite part of the village story was about a magical bridge with five arches.
The bridge crossed a river, and if you stood on the banks at the right time and lifted your arms up as high as you could, a train would come over the arches and transport you somewhere wonderful—to a fairy village, or an enchanted bakery, or a farm where all the ponies were snow white with gaits as smooth as rocking chairs.
Amity surveys the pasture sloping below us and the woods in the distance.
“There,” she says, pointing at four chimneys poking above the treetops. “That must be Hadley Hall. We’re heading that way.”
At the bottom of the hill is a wooden fence.
There’s no gate or stile in sight, so we heave ourselves up and climb over, thankful for the placid livestock that don’t require barbed wire.
We cross the road and find ourselves on a paved path that winds through beech trees.
We come upon a sign and an arrow pointing us to Hadley Hall.
Amity waves the directions in the air in triumph. I pluck a leaf out of her hair.
The medieval hall looks like one of the blocky sandcastles made by filling rectangular buckets with wet sand and turning them upside down.
It’s rough around the edges, the kind of place you’d expect to find as a deserted ruin on a stormy coast. There’s grass growing between the worn stones of the courtyard and a battered wooden door with an iron knocker.
The place looks uninhabited. I imagine Lady Blanders appearing as some kind of a ghost, in a diaphanous nightgown, long gray hair, and overgrown fingernails.
We’re stomping our feet to get the mud off our shoes when a shiny black horse canters into the courtyard, its rider a straight-backed woman with flowing dark red hair.
The horse’s bridle and saddle, which has a brown nylon bag on the back, are so well polished that they gleam in the sunlight.
A man comes rushing down the steps and takes the reins.
“Good ride, Your Ladyship?” he says. “The new shoes are sound?” He pats the horse on the leg.
“Seem to be. Have the others been done?” Her manner is clipped and officious.
“Not yet, Your Ladyship. Old Mr. Welch is still at work.”
She frowns. “Must he be so slow? See to it that he hurries up.” She dismounts and smooths her velvet jacket, turning toward us.
There’s nothing ghostly about her. She’s maybe in her late forties, and striking, with the luxurious flaming hair and green eyes of a heroine from a bodice-ripper romance.
She’s larger than life, and not only because she’s tall and broad-shouldered.
Lady Blanders purses her lips and tilts her head like she’s expecting something from us.
Amity says, “Oh,” and drops into a deep curtsy.
Wyatt puts one leg straight out in front of him, bends at the waist and flourishes his arm a few times like a court jester.
I nod my head and mumble, “Pleased to meet you, Your Ladyship.”
“Charmed,” she says haughtily. The three of us are frozen. I know we’re all play-acting here, but the thought of questioning this formidable woman about anything, let alone a fake murder, is intimidating.
And then Lady Blanders throws back her head, slaps her thigh, and lets out a honking laugh.
“Silly Yanks, I’m having you on. Lord knows what they put in the water across the pond, but you’re a funny lot.”
And with that, she turns and bounds up the stairs, leaving us to gape and follow.