Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [149]
The Valley narrowed as it drew toward its source, a river winding its way between the rolling hills and the road following as best it could. Sometimes a ford carried them to the other bank of the Exe, and sometimes a bridge carried them back.
You would think, traveling along this road, Francesca told herself, that no one lived here. The rounded, ridgelike hills rose from the water, sometimes blotting out the autumn sun, and the only creatures for miles were sheep or cattle where the grass was greenest, and a fox sunning itself on an outcrop of rock. The horses had gone to war, like the men who had once worked this land and cared for the animals and the houses that sometimes stood over the crests out of sight from the road. Women and elderly men did the heavy work on farms now, or it wasn’t done at all.
From time to time where the hills dipped, late afternoon sun threw long golden beams across the water and through the trees on her right, spears of light. Prehistoric, she thought. Before Time began and Man had come trudging up this Valley. Somehow deserted—
And now that her grandfather was dead, it was. Deserted by the remarkable spirit that had made this emptiness her home and seemingly held the life of the Valley in the palm of a powerful and graceful hand.
She hadn’t realized just how much she had loved Francis Hatton. Not even in his last illness. Or rather the final heartbreak—for no mere illness could have struck him down so ruthlessly as the deaths of the cousins.
Beside her, Mrs. Lane said in a voice still thick with tears, “I don’t know how we shall get along without him!”
“We shall have to try,” Francesca answered the housekeeper, in an effort to offer comfort. I’m the head of the household now. Such as it is. It’s my duty. . . .
“Yes, Miss Francesca. But it won’t be the same. First the five lads, and now Himself.”
“Well. We must go on. He’d want that. We aren’t the only family in England to suffer—”
“No . . .”
But one could tell, Francesca thought, that Mrs. Lane believed that the Hattons had carried the heaviest burden.
“Did you know,” she asked, suddenly reminded, “that my grandfather owned land in other parts of the country?”
“No, Miss.” The finality of the word indicated that Mrs. Lane didn’t care. Like so many of the Valley’s inhabitants, her universe was here. The rest of England might as well be across the Channel.
Silence fell between them.
Behind them the carriage rumbled over the rough, winding road like a ship wallowing in the sea. Mr. Branscombe had pressed Francesca to stay the night in Exeter, but she had chosen to travel home with her grandfather’s servants. Hers . . . Hers, now. She must remember that.
Below the road the Exe ran like a tangled ribbon, meandering of its own will, sometimes dark in the heavy shadow of trees, sometimes bright with slanting sunlight. A pretty, secretive river that cleft the hills, dividing neighbor from neighbor. Most of them preferred it that way.
When the funeral was over, Francesca told herself, she must return to London and her duties there, interrupted by her grandfather’s illness and death. He would expect it.
But she had little heart left for meeting troop trains on their way to the ports, offering men hardly older than boys tea and buns, pretending to be cheerful, happy for them as they went off to glory fighting the Hun. She had also stood on the same drafty station platforms in the depths of the night when the wounded came through, carriage after carriage of them. No flags or tea or pretty smiling faces greeted those unheralded trains. The Red Cross came to them to see to bandages and offer water, to press cold, frightened hands, and to light cigarettes for those able to smoke. It was a bloody, barbarous business, walking through the carriages where so many lay in torment. And to think that these were the survivors. There were no trains for the dead. They were buried where they fell.
It had exhausted her, the suffering