Page 43 of The Book of Lost Stories

EPILOGUE

Cleo Finch

I had an early breakfast with Unks in the morning, before he left for a two-day book-hunting trip down south, and there wasn’t a sound from Tris’s room, so I hoped he was having a good long sleep and would wake up feeling much better.

I went down to open up the shop: Tom and I were holding the fort until Unks’ return, but today was half-day closing anyway.

Tris didn’t make an appearance, but just before we closed at lunchtime I heard footsteps overhead. I wondered if he’d been awake enough at any point last night to start reading my novel and, if so, what he’d thought of it.

Tilly followed me upstairs where we found Tris sitting at the kitchen table nursing a mug of coffee, his curling chestnut hair still damp from the shower and, despite some violet shadows under his clear grey eyes, looking much more alert than when he had arrived.

‘Back in the land of the living, I see,’ I said, and when he smiled at me I had the sudden strange swooping feeling in my stomach that I’d felt last night. I suppose it was just happiness at seeing him again after so long.

Or maybe this time the odd sensation was because my manuscript was lying on the table next to his plate.

‘Just about,’ he said as I took a mug and poured myself some coffee, while Tilly draped herself around his neck in lieu of Uncle Ambrose. She never did that to me – I was quite jealous!

He tapped my manuscript with one long finger. ‘When I went to bed last night, although it was good to lie down, I was too wired to sleep, so I ended up reading your entire novel before dawn. Then I went out like a light after that.’

‘You read the whole thing ?’

‘Cover to cover – I couldn’t stop! It’s so clever, the way you’ve brought the journal and all the characters to life.’

I felt a huge relief. ‘You enjoyed it, then?’

‘Of course – it’s brilliant,’ he said, looking surprised. ‘In fact, I think it’s going to be a bestseller and I want to write the script for it, because it would make a great film or TV series! I’d like to give it a go, anyway.’

‘Of course,’ I said, feeling flattered. ‘You are the only person who has read it yet, although Unks knew what I was doing.’

‘I think we have a lot to discuss. But first, I’d like to see the original journal for myself.’

‘Of course, but why don’t we have some lunch first and postpone all that till afterwards?’ I suggested, getting up. ‘Omelette and salad with crusty wholemeal bread with a slice of your favourite Bakewell tart to follow?’

‘Sounds perfect to me,’ he agreed.

*

We made a fresh cafetière of coffee and took it into the sitting room. Neither of us is a tea drinker, unlike Uncle Ambrose, who is a dedicated Orange Pekoe addict.

We sat next to each other on the plushy velvet sofa while Tilly arranged herself in a dead pose on the window seat, although I noticed she opened one eye from time to time and looked at Tris, presumably to check he was still there.

‘You’re obviously a better Ambrose substitute than me, because she always ignores me when he’s away.’

‘I’m honoured, although it’s a bit hot when she drapes herself around my neck, not to mention disconcerting when you turn your head and find yourself face to face with her. She’s so inscrutable!’

He leaned forward and pressed the plunger on the cafetière with all the concentration of someone demolishing a building and then poured out the coffee while I fetched my pretty little wooden desk, in which I now kept the original journal and put it on the table next to the tray.

‘Here you are,’ I said, handing him Alys’s journal. ‘Unks says board-covered notebooks would have been quite a luxury item back then, so that’s probably why she crammed every page with such tiny writing.’

‘I see what you mean,’ he said, opening it and scanning the first couple of pages, which were solidly written in minute handwriting with the tiniest of spaces between the words. ‘I think my eyes are still too blurry to cope with it! Still, it’s nice to hold the genuine thing in my hands.’

‘I know, it’s like a direct connection with the past, with Alys herself, isn’t it? And although I ended my novel with Lord Rayven’s proposal, it’s good to have that final journal entry she wrote later, because it helped me fill in some of the details of what happened.’

I took the journal back and went to the final pages, reading aloud:

I have since learned much more about the events of that dreadful night, mainly from Lord Rayven himself.

Despite all attempts to suppress the rumours of what had occurred, they still got about and caused such a huge scandal that my own unmasking as the infamous author Orlando Browne – which I was still resolutely denying – dropped quite out of everyone’s minds, so a little good came from it …

‘I can see all the detail would be useful, Cleo, but I think you were right to end the novel where you did … But did she really make it a condition of accepting Rayven’s proposal that he take her down the Roman sewers in London, or did you make that up?’

‘No, it’s there in the journal,’ I told him. ‘And I have a little more information for you too, which I only discovered a couple of days ago – or rather, Unks discovered it for me.’

I opened the lid of the little desk and drew out a small drawer at the back.

‘It’s a secret drawer, a very simple one.

You just stick something thin through this tiny knot hole …

’ I demonstrated and revealed a small compartment containing a sheet of folded paper filled with the same handwriting as the journal, although mercifully not as tiny and cramped.

‘Alys wrote a final postscript several years later and put it into her desk, then perhaps forgot about it.’

‘Ambrose’s birthday present seems to be a gift that keeps on giving,’ Tris commented, pouring us both the last of the coffee and settling back with his. ‘Go on, read it to me: you must be able to make her writing out with no problem after transcribing the journals.’

‘I can,’ I agree. ‘OK, here goes.’

Priory Chase

July 1826

Recently, reading my old journal again after so many years – more than ten – it was as if I was reading a Gothic novel, albeit one more in the modern style than those I used to pen as Orlando Browne.

My last novel was published after my marriage, by which time it appeared to me that the Gothic genre was past its zenith and my sales were decreasing with each subsequent book.

But also, having lived through quite a Gothic experience of my own, I was quite written out, although this has not been entirely the end of Orlando Browne.

My marriage has been very happy. What wonderful battles Rayven and I have had, to be sure! They do add spice to life.

Just as he promised, he has indulged my passion for the secret underground places I love to explore and together we have visited so many, from the wonderfully constructed Roman ways below London, to all manner of caves and the catacombs of Paris and Rome – and Orlando Browne has written a whole series of books describing these wonders!

I have not, however, described the cellars and ancient passages below Priory Chase, now my home, or the ancient secret that is celebrated there each year …

This secret must one day be confided to Vicky, my eldest daughter, who fortunately takes after me and is an intrepid explorer, besides being interested in ancient earthworks and other antiquities, while her small sister, Louisa, is of a more domestic turn of mind, although a lovable and cheerful child.

When we are not travelling, we like best to live quietly in Yorkshire, with visits from our old friends to enliven things – although, given my husband’s naturally autocratic nature and my own independent one, things are often quite lively enough!

I mean to put my journal into Vicky’s hands at some later date, but probably not into dear Louisa’s, for I suspect when she is a young lady it would quite shock her.

No, solely to Vicky will this be entrusted, together with the secret of my authorship and to her will I also bequeath the entire works of the infamous Orlando Browne, sumptuously bound in dark blue calf leather.

‘The journal itself must be published too, of course, along with Alys’s postscript, even if I have to do it myself,’ I said. ‘Alys Weston must be recognized as the true author of the Orlando Browne books at last.’

‘Agreed. It’s an important historical document and I’m glad you found it, even if it does mean it boosts the argument in your thesis and undermines part of mine !’ said Tris.

‘We’ll both need to do a lot of rewriting – that is, if you really are serious about finishing your PhD?’

‘I am serious about that, and about a few other things,’ he said, putting his mug down. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the last couple of weeks.’

‘Oh?’ I said absently, because my mind had gone back to my novel. ‘I did wonder if I should change the names of the main characters in Lord Rayven’s Revenge , in case there are still family descendants, especially Lord Rayven’s, and they might not be happy about it.’

To my surprise he said, ‘Well, I’m the horse’s mouth on that subject.’

‘ What on earth do you mean?’ I demanded, turning to stare at him.

He looked blandly back at me. ‘That Alys was quite right about her younger daughter, Louisa, being domestically inclined, because she married at eighteen and had one of those enormous Victorian families.’

‘How on earth do you know that?’

‘Because I’m a descendant. The Rayven name and title might have died out, but the family continued in the female line. Dad told me all about it. He’s such a genealogy geek these days, the whole family tree is up on the wall back in Florida in a gilded frame in pride of place.’

‘Are you serious?’ I said, and he nodded.

‘Well, then, that has to be the weirdest coincidence ever!’ I said, stunned. Then I realized that his curling chestnut hair and those smoky quartz eyes might well be a legacy from Alys herself.