Chapter 2
TWO
I banged on the door of my aunt Bill’s cottage in St Nantes, my heart beating wildly.
I had run all the way here from Trevarron House, a couple of miles away down a winding Cornish road. It was a road I knew well.
I knew this cottage well, too, and the little lane it sat on.
I knew this village. I knew the farm at the end of the road, the fields around it, and I knew Trevarron House, the imposing manor house at the end of a winding drive.
I had known it from childhood, and now I knew it as a woman.
As the lover of William De Vere Trevarron, its lord, the man my heart longed for.
The man I feared had been torn away from me forever.
Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe my beloved Aunt Bill would open the door and say why didn’t ye let yourself in, my love?
Did ye forget your key? I’d step inside.
I’d warm my hands by the log burner, sink into one of the large, comfortable sofas and Aunt Bill would offer me a cup of tea.
I’d be home, finally, and I felt as though if that could only be true, I would never leave again.
But I knew it was only wishful thinking. It was the same cottage: I could see the stone laid into the wall around the door frame that said 1678; the date that it was built. But the garden was wild. Nettles dominated, with a few tall wildflowers fighting their way through the weeds.
I’d already seen a different version of Aunt Bill’s cottage, but this was different again, and that realisation filled me with dread. In that other time, the door had been flanked by rosemary and bay bushes. Now there was nothing except a pile of damp firewood.
The old stone wall was still there: it ran around the whole cottage and garden, protecting it from view. It had always felt cosy, before. But now, the whole place had the feeling of being unloved, hidden, secret.
The lane was different, too. There were fewer houses than there should have been.
All the way here, I’d wanted to see a car.
A bike. Someone I knew and recognised from the village.
Anything to show me that I had come home; that I was in the right time again.
But I didn’t see anyone. When I’d reached the end of the drive leading away from Trevarron House and the stone gate at the end of it, my blood had run cold as I saw the two stone griffins on top of the posts.
In my own time, the griffins weren’t there – hadn’t been there for a century or more.
The fact that the griffins were there now meant one thing: I was in the wrong time.
I was in the past.
Suddenly, the door to the cottage opened and a woman I had never seen before looked inquisitively at me.
Her dark blond hair was tied up in a scarf. She wore a long grey dress with an apron over the top, and her sleeves were rolled up. Laugh lines spread out from the edges of her eyes, but right now, she was frowning.
‘Help ye?’ she asked, in a broad Cornish accent.
‘I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.’ I turned to go. Panic had completely overtaken me.
‘What is it, maid?’ The woman stepped forward and caught my arm. ‘Speak your reason. People don’t come to the pellar’s cottage unless they need somethin’.’
‘I’m… It was a mistake. I’m sorry for troubling you.’ I shook my head and put my hand into the pocket of my long skirt, clutching at the journal I’d kept there. It was the most important thing I possessed, now. I hoped that it held the secrets to allow me to get home.
I had wanted to see Aunt Bill so badly. My heart had longed for her, and my home. And, while I had found her cottage, I knew now that Aunt Bill was nowhere here.
‘You be a traveller,’ the woman said, slowly, looking me up and down. ‘I can see it. Your dress. The way you speak. Your skin. I seen it before. You better come in, maid.’ She stood aside in the doorway. ‘If I’m right, then you got nowhere else,’ she added.
She was right. I didn’t.
Inside, a fire burned in the deep inglenook fireplace I knew so well. Otherwise, everything inside the cottage was different to Aunt Bill’s décor.
My aunt’s cottage had been furnished in a mismatched but homely style. The lounge was cosy, featuring two ancient burgundy sofas covered in cushions. It was usually lit with floor lamps that gave off a warm glow, and the wood-panelled floor was covered with a floral-patterned rug.
I had always stayed in the tiny bedroom under the eaves, with its narrow twin beds that hugged opposite walls and a small space between them that held a bedside table where Aunt Bill would leave books – mostly her own well-thumbed historical romances – and an ancient reading lamp.
I knew the lamp was old, because the flex was made of braided metal as opposed to covered in plastic like modern electrical appliances.
I liked the antiques in Aunt Bill’s house.
I liked the carved wooden bookcases, covered in flowers and mermaids, their tails curled like vines.
I liked the old grandfather clock that ticked comfortably, and chimed every hour.
I liked the way the stairs creaked when you walked up them.
There was an old upright piano in the corner of the sitting room, and, as I’d taken piano lessons as a child, my aunt had often asked me to play when I was there, and we’d sing our favourites together: ‘Let It Be’, ‘The Long and Winding Road’, ‘Piano Man’, among others.
Aunt Bill was a Beatles fan. At Christmas, I had fond memories of sitting at the piano in my fleecy pyjamas and bathrobe, with thick socks on my feet and a half-drunk hot chocolate singing ‘God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen’ and ‘Jingle Bells’.
Now, things were more spartan than in Aunt Bill’s time, and different again from when I had visited the cottage in 1755.
Then, the pellar Annie Willcock had bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling, drying.
There had been a plain wooden table and matching chairs.
A cabinet stacked with dishes stood in the corner, and the air had been smoky.
Today, the air was clearer. The inglenook fireplace was still lit, but I guessed that the chimney had been cleaned, and now, the log fire sat behind an ornate cast iron grate.
There were fresh flowers in a pretty green glass vase on top of a round wood table with matching seats.
Unlike the rough wood of the pellar’s chairs in 1755, these were upholstered in burgundy velvet.
A plain, navy-blue rug stretched from one side of the room to the other, but it was good quality, and the place was warm.
There was a wooden upright piano in her sitting room, oddly similar to Aunt Bill’s.
It brought back a rush of memories of our impromptu singalongs, and our carols at Christmas.
‘Who are you?’ I turned to her. I almost didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be home, safe, as I had planned.
‘My name is Nancy Willcock,’ she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
‘Nancy…?’ If she was a Willcock, and she lived here, she was most likely related to Annie Willcock and her daughter, who I had known as Betty.
Betty had been my maid at Trevarron House.
I had been a lady’s maid there, or at least, I had pretended to be when I’d found myself thrust through the gates of time and back in 1755.
‘What year is this?’ I asked, looking around me.
‘’Tis interestin’ you should ask.’ Nancy Willcock looked keenly at me. ‘You are not the first to arrive on the doorstep, bedraggled, not knowin’ the time o’ day or the year. ’Tis 1867.’ She gestured to a wooden chair by the door. ‘Sit down, maid.’
I sat. I was exhausted; the time portal that existed in Trevarron House seemed to have some kind of strange effect on me. I felt dreamy and distracted, but my head was pounding. I didn’t remember feeling that before, when I had gone through the first time.
‘Will you tell me your name?’ Nancy asked, watching me. It was good of her to let me in at all, but then, if she was a pellar, she was used to receiving visits at all hours from the people in the village and likely beyond.
‘My name is Tegan Penrose,’ I said, slowly. ‘I was born in 1999. I am twenty-six years old, and I have just travelled here from 1755.’ I looked up to meet Nancy Willcock’s eyes. They were steady. ‘I grew up visiting my aunt in this house. Her name was Wilhemina Penrose. I think I need your help.’