The Spirit Rose Read online

  “Is there anything you wouldn’t exploit us over?” asked Paige, who had appeared in several of her father’s documentaries.

  “Not much,” was the cheerful reply. “Does this mean you’re interested too?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Great. I’ll set it up as soon as we get home.”

  Paige sighed dramatically, then stood up and followed Aunt Augusta to the door. “Do you want us to come with you, Auntie? We could help carry things.”

  “Oh, no,” said her father, waving her back to her chair. “You keep to the job at hand. And a pretty soft job it is, too. In some parts of the world, kids spend their days harvesting crops, or toiling away in factories like child workers used to do here in Victorian times.”

  “I know,” said Paige, sullenly resuming her seat. She also knew about child workers in Victorian times. She and the boys had met some. The time-travelling properties of a gold medallion she was wearing was a well-kept family secret. Only certain people were able to use it. And those who could only discussed it amongst themselves. The children’s parents knew nothing about it.

  Even so, Mr. Marchand was about to turn the conversation in that direction. Just as he was about to put the newspaper down, something caught his eye.

  “Hey, what’s this?”

  He read for a moment, then folded the newspaper back and took it over to his wife. “Look, Tania, there’s something here about Keeper Pieces. The medallion Grantie lent us for my medieval documentary is a Keeper Piece. She told me it was the only one still around that wasn’t in a collection owned by a Sir Magnus Pickering. Who has apparently just had another of them stolen.”

  Mrs. Marchand took the paper from him. “Stolen? And did you say, ‘another’?”

  “He used to have four. A couple of weeks ago he went to show them to someone and found one missing. A ring. The glass case it was in was still intact, and still locked.”

  “An inside job?”

  “He assumed so. He kept quiet because he didn’t want any scandal. But discreet inquiries eliminated his servants and any light-fingered friends or relatives with opportunity. Now it’s happened again and, this time, he’s talking. The distinctive roses on them makes Keeper Pieces almost impossible to fence, so the cops figure it must be the work of some rival collector who’s hired a pro to get the stuff.”

  “What was the Piece that just got taken?” Paige asked uneasily.

  “A brooch. Sir Magnus still has a bracelet and belt. Funny the thief didn’t take them as well. And why weren’t they all taken the first time? It doesn’t make sense. Anyone trying for the two remaining Pieces will now have to contend with the new state-of-the-art security devices Sir Magnus says he’s going to install.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Can’t say I blame him. Beefing up security sounds like a good idea. And not just for him. You kids still have Grantie’s medallion. If someone’s after Keeper Pieces, we should take it to a bank and get it put in a safe deposit box for her.”

  “No!” the children all said together.

  “Grantie wouldn’t like that,” Jack added hurriedly. “She wants it to be worn. That’s why we take turns having it on. It’s…it’s a family tradition.”

  A tradition Grantie Etta had also embraced when she was young, as had the children’s grandfather and great-uncle.

  “It’s not a tradition I remember taking part in,” said Mrs. Marchand. “Gus and I only had it once, when your grandfather and Uncle Edmond tried to get us and Uncle Trevor to play some sort of game with it. But Grantie does seem to want them to have it, Alan. When I expressed the opinion that it was too valuable for children to be in charge of, she just laughed. She said children were supposed to be in charge of it and told me it was well insured. Even so, I don’t like the idea of it being targeted in any way.”

  “Neither do I,” agreed her husband. “There’s no knowing what kind of person has the missing Keeper Pieces, or what kind of tactics he might employ to get the rest. Or she,” he added, knowing how his daughter felt about male/female equality.

  Paige and the boys exchanged troubled looks. They knew who had the missing Pieces. They did. Both objects had been the means by which they connected to children from the past, children whose fates were, according to a rhyme on the medallion’s jewel box, not decided. Grateful for their help in ensuring their fates worked out well, the former owners had passed them on to them.

  As soon as they were finished with the cutlery, they hurried up to Paige’s room.

  Chapter Two

  “Well, this could prove awkward,” said Paige, yanking a small box out of a drawer and tipping two pieces of gold jewellery out onto her bed. Both the brooch and the head of the ring were shaped like a rose, a five-petal rose identical to the one on their medallion.

  Dane nodded in agreement. “You’re not kidding. If anyone finds out we’ve got these, they’ll think we stole them. There’s no way they’ll ever believe a couple of fifteenth century princes hid the ring for us to find in our time, or that a Victorian urchin gave you the brooch back in her time.”

  “That’s for sure. What I don’t understand is why it’s an issue. From our point in time, whatever happened before we went back in time happened. The Keeper Pieces belonging to the kids we connected with went on to other people, and eventually wound up in Sir Magnus’s collection. After we changed things, that should have changed too. He never should have had them. The ring and brooch should have stopped moving through time as soon as their owners gave them to us.”

  “With their trail lost centuries ago, and their whereabouts classified as unknown. That’s what happened with the other two medallions Uncle Edmund told us about. And the Arcanus Piece, too. There’s so little information on that, no one even knows what it is. I don’t get it. What do you think’s going on, Jack?”

  Jack had an extremely high IQ. He was also a diviner, a medallion user who received periodic flashes of insight regarding the medallion’s mysterious workings. Dane and Paige were used to him being able to explain things they couldn’t.

  On this occasion, he shook his head. “I haven’t the foggiest. I think we’d better get hold of Uncle Edmond, or Granddad, or, better still, both of them, and Grantie, too. If we all put our heads together, we might be able to figure out what’s happening. And why. And what we should do about it.”

  A phone call to Uncle Edmond brought him to the door in under ten minutes. In order to explain this unexpected appearance to Mr. and Mrs. Marchand, he said he’d come to ask if he could take the children over to Rosebank, the centuries-old house Grantie Etta called home.

  “I want to sort through Grantie’s photographs and have her choose some to put up at the party. Thought they might like to help. May I have them?”

  “Sure,” said Mr. Marchand. “While you’re there, you should talk to Grantie about her rose medallion.”

  He showed Uncle Edmond the newspaper and expressed his concerns, which the older man did his best to allay.

  When they finally got underway Uncle Edmond said, “I’d already heard about the missing Pieces by the time I got your call, my dears. Little brother got to me first. Sounded quite perturbed. Grantie took it much better when I filled her in. They’re waiting for us at Rosebank.”

  As soon as they arrived, the housekeeper, Mrs. Purdom, told them to go through to the sitting room, where Grantie Etta was seated in her favourite armchair watching their grandfather pace back and forth.

  “Please calm down, Avery. I’m sure we’ll be able to reason it out.”

  “Really? I’ve been wracking my brains and, thus far, no explanation has presented itself.”

  “We never have explanations with the medallion. Just obscure rhymes and snippets of information from which we form theories,” said Uncle Edmond, dropping into an empty armchair. “For heaven’s sake, sit down. You’re wearing a hole in the carpet.”

  Granddad carried on pacing.

  “What do you make of it, Grantie?” Paige asked as she and the boys settle
d on the sofa. “The missing Pieces are the same ones we have now—the ring and the brooch.”

  “I don’t know what to make of it. What I do know is that we’re not going to say anything about having them. Magnus has been after me to sell him the medallion for years. Were he to get wind of our having his missing baubles, he’d claim I’d started a Keeper Collection of my own and paid someone to lift them.”

  “That’s what Dad thinks someone did do,” said Dane. “He wanted to put the medallion in a safe deposit box. Uncle Edmond talked him out of it. He said you’d keep it here if it made Mum and Dad nervous.”

  “That made them even more nervous,” said Paige. “Now they want you to install some kind of security system.”

  “I’ve got one. Strawberry. Horace isn’t much of a watch-dog, but when a fellow broke in here last year, avian screeches of, ‘Thief, thief!’ and, ‘Someone shoot the blackguard!’ caused the miscreant to hightail it without taking as much as a teaspoon. He was still shaking when the police caught up with him.”

  “I think they’d prefer something a little more sophisticated,” said Uncle Edmond. “Something electronic, that sets off klaxons, and causes burly men in uniforms to burst through your door waving guns.”

  The children laughed. So did Grantie Etta.

  Granddad gave an impatient snort. “Perhaps we should stop talking about burglar alarms—which we do not require, since Magnus’s loss was not the work of a burglar—and concentrate on how such a thing could have come about. Unable to be in two places within the same time period, the missing Pieces obviously removed themselves from the one no longer relevant. But it oughtn’t to have been relevant. Once the children had those Pieces, they had them. Everything else should have altered to fit the new circumstances. It did before. When we followed up on those two Victorian children, we found their names had been restored to a passenger list they’d once been crossed off of. And if we’d ever bothered to follow up the children we met back in our day, I’m sure we would have found that history had adjusted itself then, as well, with only ourselves and those we met in the past aware of the fact. But now, someone in our own time is bewailing the theft of items he never should have had.”

  “True,” said Uncle Edmond, “but what of it? Why get all worked up just because there’s been a change in the proceedings? The medallion knows what it’s doing.”

  “Up until now, perhaps. Things seem different for these three than they were for us. Suppose something has caused it to no longer have control? Suppose whatever mysterious power it wields is running out?”

  Uncle Edmond shook his head. “It isn’t. If anything, it’s wielding more. In fact, while the changes to its workings might now be more apparent, they didn’t start with this lot.” He nodded toward Paige, Dane, and Jack. “They started with us.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, the medallion didn’t work for our children, did it? And it didn’t work because, as soon as we gave it to them, we told them what it was, and how to use it. Why did we do that? It wasn’t as though there weren’t enough warnings about talking to those who weren’t already in the know. Everyone who’d had the medallion before us knew better than to say anything until the new users figured out its workings. Why didn’t we? Why were we so cloth-headed as to tell your girls, and my Trevor, all about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Granddad admitted. “For my part, I remember thinking, ‘They’ll really like this. Why waste time having them puzzle it out for themselves?’ But you’re right. Everyone else who ever used it managed to catch on quite quickly. There was no reason for us to suppose our three were too dim to do likewise. They were keen enough to try. Leastways the girls were. I seem to recall Trevor being a bit hesitant.”

  “I put that down to the influence of a couple of young louts he was friends with at the time, and the fact he’d just turned thirteen.” Uncle Edmond gave Paige an apologetic look. “No offense, my dear; it’s a touchy age. Funny, though. I felt the same about not waiting for them to master it. I’ve no idea where the notion came from.”

  “It was probably just perversity because our own mother was so against our having the medallion,” said Granddad. “Do you remember how she claimed it was too valuable for children to be playing with, and then contradicted herself by saying it might not be real gold and wearing it could turn our skin green?”

  Uncle Edmond chuckled. “That was enough for Sister Meredith, vain creature. Even after we started using it, we couldn’t persuade her to. She thought we were making it all up.”

  “You told her as well?” Grantie Etta said incredulously. “Regular little blabbermouths, weren’t you?”

  “Afraid so,” said Uncle Edmond. “But Merry chose not to use the medallion. Our children couldn’t use it. We deprived them of their chance. As far as we know, our urge to share knowledge that past generations kept secret is unprecedented. Almost as if there was some sort of interference in play—from a source we understandeth not. Intriguing.”

  Granddad stopped pacing and stared at him. “Intriguing? Sinister might be a better word. If you’re trying to reassure me, you’re not doing a very good job.”

  Before he could say anything more, Mrs. Purdom came in. “Excuse me, Miss Wolverton, there’s an American gentleman at the door. He’d like to talk to you if you could spare him a few minutes.”

  Grantie Etta nodded assent, and Mrs. Purdom returned with a tall, middle-aged man who gave Grantie Etta an apologetic look as he extended his hand toward her.

  “Hi, there, Miss Wolverton. My name’s Mitch Braxton. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’ve reason to believe you might be able to help me. My sister Virginia and I are combining a family vacation with a little root searching.”

  Grantie Etta introduced everyone and told him to take a seat.

  “Thanks. We’re from Seattle in Washington State. Our English ancestors started out in New England, but eventually moved west. In tracing our family tree, we’ve got back as far as sixteen-fifty-six, when an Obadiah Braxton sailed to the New World with his bride, Piety Wray. We don’t know what part of England he came from, and haven’t been able to find out much over here. I’ve come to you because they stayed in touch with the family for a few generations and, in the late seventeen hundreds, a Samuel Braxton went to England to visit some of them. While here he met and married a Hortensia Rutherford and took her back to America with him. This Hortensia was the daughter of a Silas and Wilhelmina Rutherford, but Wilhelmina was born Wilhelmina Wolverton, and was, we think, a relative of yours, Miss Wolverton.”

  “Yes. I believe she was the older sister of my great-great-great grandfather, Paxton Wolverton, who was born in seventeen-thirty-eight.”

  Mr. Braxton looked at her with admiration. “You know that, just off the top of your head, ma’am?”

  “At my age, you have all kinds of trivial information stored away.”

  “At your age? Why, you don’t look a day over seventy.”

  Grantie Etta laughed. “In a couple of days, I’ll be five years past my centenary. And since you’re family, you might as well come to the party. It’s on Saturday. Bring your sister.”

  Mr. Braxton’s face lit up. “Why, thank you. I’d love to meet some more long-lost relatives. So would Ginny.” He paused for a moment. “It’s not just us, though. We came over here with our better halves and some offspring. The older kids went off to do the back-pack-around-Europe thing, but we still have one of hers, and a couple of mine, in tow.”

  “Bring them too. The more the merrier. There’s stacks of food coming, and even though my kith and kin chose the village hall over my more spacious gardens, I’m sure it has room for a few extras.”

  “I saw some gardens coming in. They’re beautiful. So’s the house. How old is it?”

  “The original structure was completed in fourteen-eighty-one. The bulk of it still stands, but there have been several additions down through the years, including one that went up around the time your Sam met our Hortensia.”
>
  Mr. Braxton whistled.

  “Would you like a tour? I’m sure the children would oblige. Most of the upstairs rooms are just used for storage, but they can take the keys and let you peek inside them, too.”

  “That’d be great.”

  Since Jack was the one most familiar with Rosebank’s layout, his cousins let him do the talking as they showed Mr. Braxton around the house.

  The American man was impressed by all of it, but especially liked the now off-limits spiral stairs with the dangling rope hold, the ground floor section that had been added in his ancestor’s time, and the secret passage between the cellar and one of the upstairs bedrooms.

  “Guess that came in handy whenever the peasants were in revolt,” he remarked after they had passed through the bedroom and were standing in the corridor outside it.

  Jack shook his head. “Peasant uprisings weren’t all that common in England. The only really significant one happened a century before Rosebank was built. But the passage did provide an escape route for a member of the king’s family later on, when some Roundheads followed him here and put him under house arrest.”

  “Roundheads. That must have been during your civil war, when Oliver Cromwell tried to get rid of your royals.”

  “He did get rid of them for a while. My father says if he hadn’t been such a miserable so-and-so, England might never have taken the monarchy back. But people found life under Cromwell a bit dreary. They longed for the ‘good old days’, when singing, dancing, and anything else that could remotely be considered fun, wasn’t regarded as sinful. After Cromwell died they gave his son short shrift and opted to have a king again. Not everyone, of course. Those who preferred Puritan ways went to, um, well…they went to…” He stopped, embarrassed.

  “America.” Mr. Braxton finished. He grinned. “With names like Obadiah and Piety, I suspect my ancestors were part of that Puritan exodus, but you don’t have to worry about us. Somewhere along the line we married out of that. We’re plain old Episcopalians these days, and we think your royal family’s A-Okay. What’s behind all these other doors along here? More bedrooms?”