AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Yes. I just read it. So it’s just my imagination going wild a bit. Except…’ I swallowed the lump in my parched throat.
‘What?’ He closed the booklet.
‘At Rievaulx I saw a man carrying a load into the infirmary. It was dark and filthy, the air choked with soot. I couldn’t work out what I was seeing. So, I bought a guidebook, like this one, and it turns out, after the Reformation, the abbey was used as an ironworks and the charcoal was stored in the undercroft.’ I bit my lower lip.
Joseph stared at me blankly and said nothing. I was close to panicking; that the thing I feared – him walking off – was near at hand, but I continued talking, feeling compelled to tell him more.
‘I’m saying I didn’t know that stuff about the ironworks. And at Dunstanburgh, I had a vision of a cavern, and a knight, and I heard a horn blowing, and it turns out that was based on a myth. I didn’t know that either.’ The heat was almost unbearable, burning me, and yet I was trembling as if icy cold.
He slowly uncoiled himself, drawing straighter and embellishing his inquisitorial height. ‘How did you find that out?’
I took a shaky breath. ‘I asked Yvette, and she told me about a poem, Sir Guy the Seeker, and when I contacted Medici, I told him, and he knew the poem. He quoted it straight back in an email.’ I dug into my bag and retrieved a small notebook where I wrote down the details of each photograph and other important things. I read the lines to Joseph in a brittle voice, spoken through parched lips.
‘“That horn to sound, or sword to draw,
Now, youth, your choice explain;
But that which you choose, beware how you lose,
For you never will find it again”
‘So you see, I think he knows, somehow.’
Joseph stood above me, looking in the direction of the car park. That was it, he was going to abandon me in Whitby.
‘Come on, daydreamer,’ he said, and held out his hand. ‘We’ll go find a nice cup of tea and something to eat, and you can stop shaking like a leaf.’
‘You don’t think I’m crazy?’ I allowed him to ease me up onto two wobbly legs.
His lips twitched with amusement. ‘No. You’ve got a wonderful imagination. I’m jealous. I’ve tried to paint like that, and I can’t. I can only recreate a version of what I see in front of me.’
I hesitated, letting myself feel the relief wash through me like a joyous wave. Joseph wasn’t judging me; he was actually jealous of my over-active imagination. Months ago, the old lady at Ashby-de-la-Zouch had called it a gift, and I had taken to the idea. Then, as I’d travelled and experienced things that unnerved and confused me, I’d lost faith in her philosophy of pursuing my fantasies. Daydreaming myself into a catatonic state had become a nuisance and it had begun to destroy what I enjoyed. After all my angst, revealing my secret and unburdening myself, was it that easy for him to dismiss my ability as simply nothing more than an over-active imagination?
We moved out of the shadows into the bright sunshine. Dazzled, I slipped on my sunglasses.
‘What about Medici?’ I asked. ‘Knowing the same obscure poem?’
‘I don’t know, Robyn. It could just be a coincidence. He’s a history buff, isn’t he? So he probably just knows these things off the top of his head.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, unconvinced.
Joseph led me out of the abbey grounds. I followed, my reckless nerves quickly calming. The deed was done. I had to wait now to see if he was going to reciprocate and reveal what he had kept secret.
Twenty-Nine
Ididn’t have the heart to tell her what I was thinking. I was too concerned about her mental wellbeing. It had obviously taken some courage for her to describe what was going on in her head. I wasn’t into the supernatural or apparitions. There weren’t any fantastical figments of the past projected into my mind, at least while I was awake. I was pretty good at holding my very real memories at bay.
I rationalised. I had to. I was under-prepared, and not sure what the appropriate response was for a fast developing, somewhat immature relationship, which was becoming like the kiss, so sweet and adolescent in its execution. What I felt towards her was urging me onward, evolving rapidly, and dependent on something more than chance or an interfering busybody who had thrown us together for no obvious purpose than his entertainment. Robyn had opened up to me, as I hoped, and now I was obliged to reply in kind. Like me, she was a natural observer, and had the potential to dig deeper behind my fractioning veneer and find my soul. I struggled to hide things from her, and the incident at Middleham had given her cause to suspect I was harbouring a secret.
Should I tell her? Did I have the courage? And when was the right moment? Thinking ahead to the next few days, the last three castles: York, Spofforth and Conisbrough, I had an inkling of how things might play out. She was yearning for a connection, and, oddly, I was too. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so needy and aroused. But then what would happen? Was I prepared to take the risk? Yes, if she was. However, it probably didn’t matter. What we had started would surely have to finish and become nothing more than a summer affair, the kind of tragic fling portrayed in a movie that left the audience with tears in their eyes.
Having hidden the camera under a blanket in the back of my car, we walked away from the abbey into town. An ice-cream perked her up and she was once again the confident Robyn who had confronted me only days ago and caught my attention so effectively. I much preferred this assertive version of Robyn. Thinking it through, she was right, there had to be something triggering her episodes, but it wasn’t going to be anything like my baggage. Tomorrow, all being well, I would take her to Scarborough and the beach; no cameras, no ruins, nothing to distract her, and then I would know for sure that my suspicious were correct, and that she could control this thing that went on inside her head.
We walked along Whitby’s steep streets, visited the harbour walls and paddled in the shallows of the sea. The afternoon was too hot. My clothes had stuck to my skin, and Robyn’s face glowed amber. It felt like there was no escape, no means to build on what I was feeling inside, the ache of wanting her.
‘Joseph,’ she said, ‘do you have air-conditioning in your car?’
‘Yes. It only blasts cold air, nothing temperature controlled.’ I followed her train of thought. ‘If we moved it to somewhere under a tree, it would cool down super quick.’
