Chapter Eighteen
D unstan went from hazy, satisfied contentment to full alert so fast that it left him slightly dizzy.
“Fire!” the shouts continued from the hall outside Carys’s rooms. “Everyone hurry! Bring buckets and take them to the old tower!”
The mention of the old tower had Dunstan tensing, then springing into action.
“We were just in the old tower,” Carys said, scrambling out of bed herself and snatching up her clothing from the floor.
“How long were we asleep?” Dunstan asked as he found his breeches and bent to slide them on.
What he wanted to ask was how long their lovemaking had lasted, how much time had passed since they’d left the old study. Were any of his family members still there? Had they accidentally started a fire or were darker forces at work?
He’d always been hesitant about believing in the Curse of Godwin Castle, but if a fire had broken out for no reason in the very spot where the family had just been gathered, he might have to reconsider.
“We could not have been asleep for long,” Carys said, looking into her study as she fetched clean, simple clothing from her wardrobe to don. “The kettle I set for tea is only just boiling.”
Dunstan nodded, then continued to dress. If they had only departed the old study an hour ago or less, perhaps there was a chance that the fire had only just started as well and had not spread.
“Hurry,” he charged Carys, pausing to help her with the ties of her ordinary gown once she’d slipped into it. “If the fire is bad, we need to help.”
“Agreed,” Carys said.
As soon as they were both fully dressed and as presentable as they could be on short notice, Dunstan took Carys’s hand and ran with her through her study and out to the hallway, retracing their steps from earlier.
The corridor that separated the older part of the castle from the newer section wasn’t as dark or silent as it had been such a short time ago. It seemed as though every servant in the house was awake, and all of them were hurrying back and forth from the door that had been broken earlier and up into the heart of the old castle.
“Step aside,” Dunstan told them as politely as he could in his need to discover what had happened as quickly as possible. “Where is the fire?”
“Upstairs,” Danny told him as they passed near the staircase Dunstan and Carys had come down earlier. “It is in your bedchamber, my lord,” Danny went on when he recognized to whom he was speaking.
Dunstan paused, his eyes going wide, and exchanged a glance with Carys. He then gripped her hand tighter and hurried on up the stairs.
They dodged servants as they went, and even came across Mr. Entwistle at one point.
“The only way to get water to the fire is to carry it up this way from the well,” Mr. Entwistle told them. “This part of the castle isn’t easily navigable.”
Dunstan nodded and continued on, bringing Carys with him.
They passed something of a commotion on the floor where the old study was located. The room that had been the scene of the earlier theatrics was filled with smoke. In the brief glimpse he had, Dunstan spotted his brother and cousins dashing in and out of the room, looking as though they were rescuing things that had been on the shelves.
“Do you want to assist them?” Carys asked when he hesitated on the landing.
“Perhaps in a moment,” Dunstan replied, continuing up the stairs. “I want to see what has befallen my bedchamber first.”
He almost wished he hadn’t been so keen to know. What he did not know could not have hurt him as much as the sight of all the things he held most dear being licked and destroyed by flames did. His bed was completely afire, the flames tearing through his bedcovers and the tapestry hanging behind it. The tapestries on the other walls were consumed with flames as well, no matter how many buckets of water the loyal servants of the castle threw on them.
“My lord!” Ruby called out to him from his wardrobe on the far side of the room. “Take your things!”
For the briefest of moments, Dunstan was deeply impressed with Ruby’s courage when he had otherwise thought her timid as she gathered armfuls of his clothing from the wardrobe and raced with it into the hall. She dumped her load, then ran right back into the burning room to rescue more of his things.
“Leave them,” he charged her as she carried another load of his jackets and waistcoats into the hall. “The finest clothing in the world is not worth the price of your life.”
Ruby glanced at him in adoration for a moment before coughing and dashing off to join the bucket line that was now forming in the stairwell.
“I’ve never seen flames take to cloth so quickly,” Carys said, clutching Dunstan’s arm, either in sympathy or with fear, Dunstan could not tell.
“It is all old,” he said, backing away so that the buckets of water could be passed into the room. “Both wood and fabric are ancient.”
He pulled Carys back further, raising his hand as a whoosh of flame caught on the canopy of his bed, making the fire more intense.
“We should go downstairs and help the others rescue the contents of the old study,” Carys said.
Dunstan heard the implied “before the floor catches fire and gives way” behind her words and nodded. He took her hand once more, and they raced back down to the old study, avoiding the bucket line as they went.
“So much of it is flammable!” Cedric shouted as Dunstan and Carys dashed into the old study. “Get the papers out first, and we’ll worry about the wood after.”
Dunstan nodded, and he and Carys went to work, taking armfuls of books and boxes of ancient manuscripts from the shelves and running into the hall with them. They carried them all the way down the corridor that connected that part of the castle to the newer part on the first floor, which led them nearly directly to the library.
Already, Lady Kat and Lady Minerva were sorting and storing the rescued books and other documents on tables where the other books and diaries they’d all been studying in the library stood. Napoleon was crouched anxiously by one of the legs of the table, close to Lady Kat’s feet. They accepted the new treasures silently, wariness in their eyes. They were already covered in soot and their faces were streaked, which told Dunstan they had been fighting the fire for some time.
Every time they returned to the old study to retrieve more of the precious Godwin family history, the room seemed more filled with smoke. Dunstan prayed that was because the flames in his room upstairs were being doused and causing more smoke than destruction. He already suspected he’d have to take over one of the guest rooms for the foreseeable future.
“When did the fire start?” he called out to Cedric as he sent Carys running from the room with another armful of books.
“We’re not certain,” Cedric replied, piling more items into his arms. Aside from books, the shelves held everything from old daggers and carvings to an ornate relic box with enameled sides that must have been as old as the castle itself. “We all scattered at the end of the séance. I took Muriel back to our room and made certain she was settled. By the time I came back down to make certain my father was well, I could already smell the smoke.”
Dunstan coughed as that smoke filled his lungs, then took his load out of the room and down the hall to the library.
“I did not realize the old study was so filled with treasures,” Carys said, taking the relic box from the top of Dunstan’s pile and setting it on the library table as she unloaded his arms. “I should find whoever’s task it was to keep the room tidy and chastise them for their negligence.”
“Perhaps now is not the best time, love,” Dunstan said, attempting levity despite the seriousness of the moment.
Carys smiled at him, but that was all either were capable of before running back to the old study.
The shelves were nearly empty by the time they were there. Cedric was coughing far too much for Dunstan’s liking, so Dunstan sent him and Waldorf, who was also coughing dangerously, from the room with the last armfuls of family treasures. Alden was in better condition, so Dunstan waved him over so that the two of them might attempt to move a large, carved chair out of danger.
The chair was immensely heavy, and even when Lawrence came over to join them, they could only barely slide it across the floor.
“Leave it,” Dunstan said, giving up as more and more smoke poured down through increasing cracks in the ceiling. “It may be ancient, but it is not worth any of our lives.”
Before he could finish those words, Carys cried out, “Dunstan, look out!”
Dunstan only had time to glance up from where he’d been studying the chair before a shower of embers rained down on him. They bit and stung at his cheeks and singed spots of his hair and the shoulders of his jacket before he could do anything. The ceiling above him gave an ominous crack as well.
The next thing Dunstan knew, Carys had leapt forward and grabbed his arm. She tugged him hard, pulling him away from his spot just as one of the boards gave way entirely, sending a shower of flaming debris down where he had stood mere seconds before.
“We have to get out!” Carys shouted, continuing to pull him and coughing as she did.
They ran, not only out of the room, but down the hall and as close to safety as they could get while still able to see the study. Alden and Lawrence fled the room as well.
“More water!” Alden shouted into the stairwell. “The fire has reached the old study!”
Blessedly, someone returned his cry with, “It’s almost out! The fire above has almost been quenched!”
That gave Dunstan hope. Rather than fretting and giving up or shooing Carys back to the library with the other women, they both headed into the stairwell, joining the bucket line to bring more water up to the remnants of Dunstan’s bedroom. Dunstan’s lungs ached, and within minutes, his arms ached as well as he hauled bucket after bucket of water up the stairs to the next person, fighting to save what he could of his family’s home.
He did not know how much time had passed before the call of, “It’s out! The fire is out!” sounded from above.
A huge wave of relief rippled down the line of exhausted and sweaty servants as the last few buckets were brought up to douse any remaining embers and the empty ones were passed down.
Soon enough, Dunstan was able to take Carys’s hand and lead her away from the bucket line, back into the hallway, where they had a view of the old study.
“It looks as though it was just that single board breaking,” Alden said, clapping a relieved hand on Dunstan’s shoulder as the two of them stood looking into the old study. “Other than the damage from the smoke, it looks as though the room was saved.”
“I cannot say the same for my bedroom,” Dunstan said, glancing up through the small, black hole that had opened in the ceiling. All he could make out of his bedroom from that angle was blackness and destruction.
Carys stood by his side, holding his arm. She inclined her head to him, almost like she would rest it on his shoulder to comfort him.
Before she could do or say anything, however, indistinct shouting sounded from the floors below them.
“What the devil?” Alden said, turning to the source of the commotion.
They all turned, and within moments, the shouting resolved into Mr. Hardy, the castle’s butler, bellowing, “That you would dare show your face here after being dismissed is unforgivable, but to set fire to the castle as well?”
Carys jerked straight and glanced to Dunstan just as he looked at her.
They did not need words to communicate what they knew, but Dunstan gasped, “Edgar!” all the same.
The two of them and Alden moved away from the old study’s doorway just as Edgar was dragged up into the hallway by a furious and soot-smeared Danny. Mr. Hardy followed behind them looking like the devil himself with his face black and his clothing singed. The good man had been one of those who had braved the flames of Dunstan’s bedroom to do what he could.
“The family will have something to say about this!” Mr. Hardy shouted as Danny pulled him all the way into the hall.
“We will indeed,” Dunstan growled, stepping away from the doorway to face the man.
Edgar looked as dirty and bedraggled as Dunstan had ever seen him. He had only been dismissed that morning, but he looked as though he had been dragged through a swamp and back again in the time that he had been banished from the castle.
“I did not intend for this to happen!” Edgar stammered, pale and shocked. “It was not meant to be like this.”
“So you did not mean to burn us all in our beds as thanks for the years of kindness we’ve shown you?” Alden asked, stepping forward.
“It should be mine,” Edgar wept, more out of remorse than the sort of anger he’d displayed that morning. “It should all be mine.”
“Tell that to the rest of the family,” Mr. Hardy said.
Danny dragged Edgar down the hallway that led to the library, where the rest of the family was waiting, Dunstan, Carys, and the others following. They made a macabre procession of sooty, blackened faces, bringing the smell of smoke with them.
In the library, they found the rest of the exhausted family strewn around the now heavily laden tables, picking and sorting through singed books, papers with blackened edges, and trying to sort the treasures, such as the relic box, from the trash.
Uncle Gerald had come down to the room in his nightgown and robe. He glanced up anxiously when the procession entered the library, then glowered furiously at Edgar once he saw him.
“You!” he bellowed, marching away from the chair he’d been standing beside near the fireplace, shaking his cane at Edgar. “I should have known you were behind this travesty!”
“So you think you can kill us all in our beds now in order to claim the Godwin family inheritance is yours now, do you?” Waldorf said, storming forward and grabbing Edgar by the front of his shirt.
Even Napoleon came out from under the table long enough to hiss at Edgar.
“I did not mean to hurt anyone,” Edgar cried, shaking as if he were outside in the middle of the frosty night.
“A likely story,” Dunstan said, wishing he could lay hands on the odious man himself.
“I warned you that if you did not leave Godwin Castle for good I would send the constable after you,” Uncle Gerald said. “It would seem I have no further choice but to—”
His threats were cut off by a sudden cry, as if in triumph, from Lady Minerva at the other end of the room.
Dunstan turned, Carys turning with him, to see what had caused Lady Minerva’s interruption. She stood at the end of the table where many of the recovered artifacts had been set aside, staring down in awe at something that was concealed from Dunstan’s view by one of many piles of books.
“What is it?” Lady Kat asked, dropping the books she was sorting to rush to Lady Minerva’s side. When she reached her, she gasped at whatever Lady Minerva was looking at and said, “Is that what I think it is?”
Those words alone were enough to make Edgar and his crimes secondary. With another glance to Carys, Dunstan took her hand and headed across the room. The rest of the family moved in that direction as well.
“You stay right where you are,” Uncle Gerald said, pointing his cane at Edgar as he joined the shift to the other end of the room. “Guard him with your life!”
“Yes, my lord,” Danny said.
The entire family, or as many of them as could fit, quickly gathered around Lady Minerva, staring over her shoulder…at the relic box, which now stood open on the table. Dunstan expected to see some sort of gold or jewels. Perhaps the box might even contain Aethelbore’s half of the amulet, which they had yet to even go searching for.
Instead, the item that had caused such a fuss and that had Lady Minerva and Lady Kat buzzing was nothing more than a very old, long, narrow piece of parchment.
“I do not understand,” Dunstan said, frowning at it as Lady Minerva moved it to the table and began to slowly and painstakingly unroll its fragile length.
“Look,” Carys gasped, pointing to the top of the scroll.
At the very top, in the blocky letters that had been used by scribes centuries ago, was the name Morgana Whitney, along with the numbers 934-988. Beneath that was written Otto Whitney with the numbers 953-1004. And beneath that were several names, all with dates of birth and death.
“It’s Morgana’s family tree,” Lady Minerva gasped, unrolling the scroll more and more.
The handwriting and ink changed the farther down the writing went, as if different hands through successive generations had kept track of the children born to each new generation of descendants. The names were crowded together in some places and incredibly sparse in others, particularly through the fourteenth century and the years of plague.
There were other subtle changes to the names written as well. “Whitney” was recorded as “Whitby” in a few places, and then “Whitney” disappeared entirely. By the fifteen hundreds, “Whitby” was gone as well, transforming into “Whybey”. That changed as well until the very bottom of the scroll, where the names had ceased being recorded in the early seventeen hundreds.
The very last name recorded on the scroll, right at the bottom, after successive new bits of parchment had been pasted on over the centuries, was Annemarie Weatherby.
“My God,” Carys gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. “Annemarie Weatherby was my great-grandmother.”