The Legend of Nimway Hall: 1940-Josie Page 10

  “Thirty-two feet at its girth, nearly hollow inside and thought to be more than a thousand years old. Winnie’s favorite place on a hot summer day—go girl!— and my favorite place to hide when I was a little girl.” The dog barked and bounded toward the oak, disappearing into a dark split in its thick trunk.

  “Who were you hiding from?”

  “My two cousins. Both boys. Tony, a year older and Frederick, two years. The closest I have to siblings. Balesboro Wood was our magical kingdom. I was the queen and they were my knights. Still are.”

  “Where are your cousins now?”

  Her eyes misted over. “Tony’s in the Royal Marines and Fred’s just entered the Naval College at Greenwich.”

  “I can quite easily see you playing here. Plotting with, and against, your cousins.”

  “I learned from the best.”

  “Remind me not to cross you, Josie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If your mystical powers are as potent as your family legends claim, then I fear you might one day trap me inside a tree for the duration.”

  “Just as Nimue did to Merlin?” Her smile grew devilish. “If you knew Balesboro Wood as I do, Gideon, you’d best heed your own warning!”

  Not at all certain how to read the woman, he nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really ought to be getting back to the Hall. I have a busy afternoon and the inspectors will have calmed down by now and are tucking in to Mrs. Lamb’s delicious Eve’s pudding. With Nimway’s own Somerset apples topped with warm custard. Irresistible, my dear colonel.” She licked her fingertip as though it tasted of cream and cinnamon, then hoisted the rucksack and satchel off Cassie’s pommel. “I’ll leave you to finish your survey. By the way, if you get thirsty, the village is through that break in the stand of alders; I can recommend Nimway’s scrumpy at the Hungry Dragon. When you get to the churchyard wall keep to the right and you’ll find yourself back on the High Street. Safer than trying to find your way home the way we came.”

  “Tonight, in the library?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.” She challenged him with a provocative smile and a lift of her eyebrow, hitched the two bags over her shoulder— “Come, Winnie!” —then strode away through the tall golden grass until she and her black dog vanished into the shadows of the woods, leaving Gideon to stare after her, his pulse racing, his head tangled with her yarns.

  Cassie nickered and nudged him in the middle of his back, as though urging him to follow her.

  “Not a good idea, Cassie,” he said, wondering that his leg hadn’t given him a pinch of trouble since he’d arrived in the woods.

  He easily swung up into Cassie’s saddle and rode back to the site of the abandoned ice house to more completely examine the site for its suitability. The three other possible locations had points against them.

  Judging by the overgrown track, the ice house must have been abandoned nearly thirty years before. The entrance had once been a half-barrel shaped vestibule made of red brick, most of which had collapse backward against, what he could only assume as he reached through the curtain of trailing ivy and pulled a few bricks from the jumble, was a thick oak door. All to the good.

  The blocked entrance would serve as perfect camouflage for the trapdoor entrance he hoped his sappers could dig through the limestone from the low wooded ledge a dozen feet above. He wasn’t sure what was on the other side of the blockage—a natural cave or a brick-lined room—but either case put the ice house at the top of his list of options for the Operational Base.

  He took a dozen quick measurements, sketching out the site on a notepad, included the approaches and current placement of the surrounding trees and understory which would need to be protected from any disturbance made by the construction.

  The sun was nearly setting when he finished and realized that the debriefing meeting wasn’t for another hour. He decided to chance being seen on his casual approach to the churchyard. After all, hadn’t the lady of Nimway Hall invited him to have a look?

  Ten minutes later he had secured Cassie to a branch just inside the woods and was standing at the low stone wall, looking out at what seemed to be an ancient section of the churchyard. Tall stalks of nearly spent wildflowers waved between moss-covered tombstones that tipped every which way, some leaning against each other, some fallen, a few propped in a line against the wall itself. The gray stone of the old Norman belltower was barely visible through the weedy trees. Not a soul to be seen anywhere.

  And there it was: the yew tree, a dozen yards further on, exactly as described in last night’s message, its trunk embedded in the dry stone wall itself, hundreds of cloth clooties hanging from its branches, waving in the breeze. He hoisted himself over the wall and made his way through waist-high weeds and canted stone grave markers.

  The yew tree was much smaller than Maximo, but doubtless much, much older, older than the church itself. Its heartwood was long gone, leaving only a massive pair of trunks rising from the base and intertwining in an upward spiral to represent what had once formed the perimeter of the original trunk. The canopy of deep green needles branched upward and outward in a series of arcs that sheltered and shaded the tombstones gathered under its spreading branches.

  Secluded, singular, yet unremarkable. He couldn’t have chosen a better drop site himself. He glanced around the churchyard, saw nobody, no movement at all but the breeze buffeting the tall weeds and the festoons of clooties hanging above his head. And among them, the deep red strip of linen looped three times around a lower branch. The correct tree and his first contact with Arcturus.

  He stooped beside the irregular-shaped base on the right side of the trunk, near the wall. He reached through the narrow cavity between the tangle of roots and felt around for the metallic object placed somewhere inside by his contact. Found handfuls of leaf litter and a store of last year’s acorns from a forgetful squirrel. He positioned himself closer, bent onto one elbow and reached more deeply into the hollow. Nothing in the lower section, but when he felt around the upper recesses, his knuckles struck the object, tucked neatly into a niche at the upper back of the hollow.

  He retrieved the small metal capsule, a little larger and longer than a cigarette, and knelt low as he twisted off the cap and opened it. He removed the curled piece of paper with its coded lettering and flattened it before buttoning the message into his shirt pocket. He would decrypt and read it tonight.

  He retrieved the red clootie from the tree, rolled it around the encrypted message he’d prepared in advance, then shoved the roll into the case. Now that the red clootie was no longer hanging from the yew, Agent Arcturus would know that a message was waiting in the dead drop.

  These first messages were only a test of the system, a chance to assess the dead drop and the signals, before transmitting real information. Gideon had paraphrased and encrypted Churchill’s recent speech to Parliament:

  Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, this was their finest hour.

  A pithy and fitting phrase to launch this liaison with his counterpart at the SOE, Churchill’s redoubtable Agent Arcturus.

  Chapter 6

  Josie kept catching herself smiling like a loon as she hurried back to the kitchen, whistling even. Tried hard to settle the fluttering in her stomach and the racing of her heart each time the colonel–Gideon–found his way into her thoughts.

  She discovered the timber inspectors exactly where she’d expected to find them, resting in the servant’s hall under Mrs. Lamb’s capable care, Rufus slumped against the back of an arm chair, Darby lying face up on a bench, eyes shut tightly.

  “How are the wicked timber people?” Josie asked in a whisper, peering at the welt on the back of Darby’s hand.

  “Much better, if a bit tipsy after two doses each of my tincture of stinging nettle.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Lamb. I do need to fi
nish up with them before we send them home.”

  She roused the men with copious amounts of sympathy then settled them into the farm office where she coached them through their reports on the state of Nimway’s forest reserves, and finally sent them on their way with pots of Mrs. Lamb’s bee-sting poultice, a basket of cheese, jam and bread, and a half-dozen bottles of Nimway Scrumpy.

  After all, with the fate of her beloved Balesboro Wood still firmly in the remorseless hands of the Timber Supply Department, she wasn’t above a bit of bribery.

  “All in for the war effort, right, Winnie, my girl?”

  Winnie agreed with an enthusiastic wag and a woof and a toothy smile, cocking her head to the side, ears flopped like a pair of wavy black flags.

  “Good, then. Let’s go find out how the new schoolroom is coming along! Children, Winnie!” Josie’s highly anticipated gesture sent the dog chasing out of the farm office and barking up the gravel lane toward the make-do school, perched on the upper edge of the newly turned field of winter wheat.

  She couldn’t have been more pleased when she finally caught sight of the building, gleaming in the sunshine. Winnie went chasing past, her delighted bark bouncing though the valley as she went in search of the children.

  Mrs. Tramble and Mr. Broadfoot were standing under the eave of the shed roof, examining one of the windows.

  “You’ve done a spectacular job of it, Mr. Broadfoot!” Josie said as she approached. “Don’t you think so, Mrs. Tramble?”

  From the outside the structure still resembled the old stone-built loafing shed, but Mr. Broadfoot had repaired the slate roof, added a timbered floor, a fourth wall with a door and two awning windows, plus a small pot-belly stove.

  “Indeed, he has, Miss Josie! I’m thoroughly delighted! Better even than our school in Stepney. The children think so too. Never in my life had students so excited about starting their first day of school!” A cloud of squeals and laughter rose up from the apple orchard, as though to put a point on the children’s approval. “We thank you so much!”

  Freedom and fresh air—a clean classroom and the great outdoors; how could they not thrive after the squalor and neglect of their lives in London?

  “Class time should be right comfortable in here in the schoolhouse for the next few months, Miss Josie—” Broadfoot gazed up into the eaves. “Until the weather turns bitter and we get our first snow storm.”

  “Of course.” She hadn’t had time to think that far. “Let’s plan to relocate the class to the east parlor after Christmas. Unless the SOE requisitions another wing of the Hall.” Not entirely impossible. “Anything else come to mind?”

  “I just been tellin’ Mrs. Tramble here, that I’ll be pluggin’ up these soffits with reeds from the lake to reduce the draftin’ on those windy days ahead.”

  “You’re always thinking well ahead of me, Mr. Broadfoot.” The man and his family had been a vital part of Nimway Hall since long before Josie herself was born; he knew the ebb and flow of the seasons, how they effected every field and tree, the livestock and everyone on the estate. “Then I’ll leave you both to your work. And thank you. This war is bringing out the best in everyone.”

  Almost everyone, she thought as she strode back toward the farm office to face the two hours she needed to spend typing and assembling the heap of reports she owed the Ministry of Ag. Gideon and his staff of officers were doubtless doing their best, but damn the man for not recognizing the same effort in the people around him. Perhaps their time together in the woods today had served to soften his opinions somewhat. The test would come at half-ten. She doubted he would pass.

  Still, she’d been hoping to see the man at dinner, became increasingly annoyed at herself for repeatedly glancing up from her plate of Lord Woolton’s ghastly vegetable pie and the Ministry of Ag’s weekly circular every time someone new entered the dining room, chiding herself for being disappointed when it was one of the Land Girls or Mrs. Lamb and not him. Gideon. Quite a fine name.

  “Dreamy, ain’t he, Miss Josie?”

  “What’s that, Trina? Who?” Josie glanced down the length of the table toward the young woman sitting at the opposite end with the other Land Girls, felt a telling blush that threatened to unmask her guilt.

  Damn if she wasn’t being called out for staring at the door to the butler’s pantry, her mind wandering to the conservatory just beyond, actually listening for the sound of Gideon’s deep baritone that would let her know he’d returned safely from the wood.

  “The colonel, of course,” Trina said, looking toward the same door, elbows propped on either side of her bowl, her sharp chin resting on the back of her clasped hands. “Haven’t you noticed, Miss Josie? He’s so, well…manly.”

  “And virile.” Francie sighed, flicked her dark hair over her shoulder, and took the same pose as Trina. “Like Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind.”

  “Brawny, is the colonel—like a Scot!” Maureen said, broadening her brogue and sharing a blushing giggle with her compatriots.

  Josie did her best to ignore their girlish gossip, trying to read the Ag’s hideously boring new circular on current theories of planting, cultivating and harvesting sugar beets, but failing each time his name was mentioned.

  “Sure, the colonel’s unholy handsome,” Patsy said, “but don’t you ever wonder how a big strapping soldier like him got himself wounded? I surely do.”

  Wounded? Josie set down her fork and stared at the door again, as though she could see him through it. Gideon, wounded?

  “I mean,” Patsy said with a catch in her voice, “I can’t help wondering at the colonel’s wound, because my husband’s in the 1st Royal Tank Division in North Africa, fighting the Italians, and I haven’t heard from him since early August—goin’ on two months, now.” The girl’s pale brows came together in a worried frown. “I think about soldiers getting wounded all the time. Worse than just wounded, actually.”

  “Now, now, mustn’t worry yourself, Patsy.” Trina rubbed Patsy’s forearm. “Your Bert probably falls right asleep every night after driving his tank across the burning sand all day. That’s why he hasn’t written.”

  “That’s probably true, Patsy,” Josie said, still confused by the mention of Gideon’s wound and ashamed at how little she knew about the young women living under her roof, “the general mail from the front is unreliable at best. But I’m sure you would have heard if he had been badly wounded.”

  “Miss Josie’s right,” Maureen said, touching Patsy’s hand. “My own brother, Dougal, was shot in the shoulder during the evacuation and my mum didn’t know it until he showed up on her doorstep in Clydebank with his arm in a sling.”

  “But ladies, back to the colonel’s having been wounded–how do you know this?” And why wouldn’t he have mentioned something to her?

  The four young women looked directly at Josie, actually stared. Trina canted her head to the side. “You must have noticed, Miss Josie. That limp of his, on his left side. A dead give-away there’s something wrong with his leg.”

  “Cane’s another give-away.” Francie gestured at her own leg with a piece of buttered bread.

  Gideon has a limp? Walks with a cane? Since when? She’d spent nearly an hour with him in the woods today, crawled around on the library floor with him last night. Surely she would have noticed.

  “Was it an accident?” Josie asked, feeling horribly unsettled, but certain it must have been that afternoon, after she left him. Otherwise, how could she have missed him limping through the wood? “When did it happen?”

  “Didn’t ask,” Maureen said, spreading blackberry jam across a slice of bread, “and soldiers don’t like to talk about that sort of thing. But I’ve been imagining he must have been wounded in hand-to-hand combat with a Nazi stormtrooper.”

  Trina let out a low whistle. “I certainly wouldn’t mind a bit of hand-to-hand combat with the colonel.” She laughed and nestled back against her chair, closed her arms around her chest in an embrace. “Those smoky blue eyes—
”

  “That square chin!” Francie said.

  “Those luscious lips! Ooo, I just want to bite them!”

  “Maureen!” the three young women said in a single voice, before they all fell to laughing.

  Still dumbfounded at their claim that Gideon had been limping around with a cane, Josie could only look on and listen in stunned amazement as the young women kept up their wild fantasies about him.

  “You’d best take care, Maureen,” Patsy said with a wag of her finger. “Don’t let your Lieutenant Crossley hear you say such things about another man, especially not his Commanding Officer, else you’ll be buying your own beer tonight at the Hungry Dragon.”

  “That is if the lot of them are back in time for a tipple in the village.” Trina giggled along with Francie.

  “If?” Maureen sat upright, her eyes wide. “I hadn’t thought of that!”

  Josie couldn’t help but ask, “Where have the colonel and his staff gone, Patsy?”

  “Dunno any more than that, Miss Josie. Mrs. Lamb told us she served them an early dinner in their headquarters, while they were working behind closed doors.”

  Francie dropped her fork into the center of her empty bowl and pushed it away. “I saw them leave through the French doors as Trina and I were driving the Fordson into the stableyard. Must have been near seven o’clock.”

  “Francie, did you see which direction they took?” Josie heard herself ask again, too quickly, too openly, wondering why she cared where the man was or what he was doing. Let alone whether or not he had been injured, or that he walked with a limp, or carried a cane. Or still planned to meet her tonight in the library.

  “I think I did,” Patsy said as she piled up the empty soup bowls onto her own. “I was pulling carrots in the garden for Mrs. Higgins when I saw them heading around the paddocks toward the woods. The colonel, his staff and three of those sapper fellows.”

  “Ah.” That made sense, then. Gideon would be showing his men the survey site he’d settled on that afternoon. “I just wanted to know where they were, for a head count, in case of an air raid.” Though not a single siren had sounded in Balesborough since that week of practice drills the day after war had been declared, and in the first week of the London bombings.