Page 35 of The Forgotten Boy

DIANA

NOVEMBER 1918

If the gravity of the situation had not sufficiently impressed itself upon the adults at Havencross, then the headmistress set them straight without a word. Clarissa Somersby, cheeks stained with color and eyes glittering almost feverishly, had set up command in the great hall in preparation for a search. And if you weren’t looking at her, you might think she was simply an incredibly prepared headmistress, right down to the appropriate martialing of search parties.

And she was prepared—with maps of each section of the house as well as the grounds ready to hand and with notations about places easily overlooked. Diana would have been impressed if she didn’t have such a vivid mental image of Clarissa spending years creating and poring over these maps and every hiding place they represented. Years in which she had never stopped looking for her little brother.

That was what you saw when you looked at her—the bereaved sister thrust back into her greatest nightmare.

Except Thomas had been gone eleven years. Tonight it was Jasper Willis they were looking for. And the advantage of that was Jasper had nowhere near the familiarity with Havencross as young Thomas once had.

Clarissa designated Joshua to stay with her and help conduct interviews with Jasper’s classmates, including the three boys who shared his room. Diana managed to pull Joshua aside long enough to say, “Do what you can to direct the questioning yourself. I’m afraid she’ll frighten the boys.”

He’d nodded once, agreement in his expression, and told her to be careful. She wasn’t thrilled to be paired with Luther Weston, but he kept his mouth shut as they took heavy torches and threaded their way back to the medieval section of the house. From what was now a kitchen storeroom, they let themselves down the ladderlike stairs into the cellar.

The dampness hit her first, wrapping around her like the chains of an anchor. There was no other smell like that of damp, heavy soil.

Diana didn’t know she’d stopped until Weston bumped into her from behind.

“Sorry,” they both said automatically, and Diana shook her head hard to force back the choking fear trying to worm its way in through her skin and nose.

“Don’t like cellars?” Weston commented.

“Not ones that began life five hundred years ago. At least it’s empty.”

She swung her light, seeing only the rock walls and packed earth where casks of wine and barrels of produce had been stored at one time. It had long since been cleaned out—no forgotten bottles, not even a forlorn potato or apple. Nothing—and nowhere—to hide.

She was pretty sure Weston eyed her thoughtfully when they emerged from the cellar, and she took in three deep breaths in quick succession. “Split up?” she suggested. “I’ll do the back rooms, you cover the front. Meet at the foot of the stairs?”

He agreed, and Diana explored the succession of low-­ceilinged, dark-paneled rooms that had once been home to medieval servants wearing their lord’s badge, armed men standing guard against the Scots and troublesome neighbors, clerks, cooks, and chaplains. Even the lady of the house had probably been back in these storerooms or antechambers, for this had not been a castle. Just a family home, a family with wealth enough for comfort but not so much as to vault them into prominence through war or judicious marriages.

As Diana was checking inside the last of the store cupboards—no sign of the missing boy—the door to the room slammed shut.

“Weston!” She hoped she sounded furious.

But she knew, even as she strode across the room with more haste than dignity, that he was unlikely to pull a prank in such a tense situation. She grabbed the handle, but the door refused to open. She tugged hard and shone her light to look for any locks or catches. But this was a medieval door, and the handle—smack in the middle—couldn’t lock. The only way to secure it was with the bar, and that was clearly undone.

One last pull and the door flew open hard enough that she stumbled back.

She wasn’t surprised that no one was there. Or that she heard the tapping of dainty heels echoing away from her down the corridor.

She was, however, beginning to be furious. That energy trickled through her veins like an infusion of drugs, and she let it fuel her as she marched to the staircase. Weston had not found anything in the rooms he’d searched, and they continued to come up empty as they scoured the next two floors. He respected the infirmary and her bedroom to the point of not touching anything, but he kept a close eye on her while she rummaged through everything, even the most absurd of hiding places—really, why would Jasper Willis have closed himself inside her empty luggage case? Did Weston think her likely to be complicit in hiding a child and turning out the school in the middle of the night to look for him? Ridiculous.

Like the cellar, Diana had not been up in the attic space of the medieval section before. Unlike Victorian houses, the uppermost floor had almost certainly not been set aside for servants but used as comfortable accommodations for the family. Not quite a castle keep but adhering to the general rule that the lower floors were for household work and business, and the upper ones for guests, diplomacy, and privacy.

Also for retreat during an attack.

If Jasper had chosen to retreat here, he hadn’t stayed long. The space was intimidatingly bare. Diana could see every foot of it from the top of the enclosed spiral staircase.

And yet … even as she told herself It’s empty, vague outlines began to form. All suggestion and shadow, but Diana swore she could see furniture forming before her eyes. Very specific types of furniture: enormous coffers with carved sides, high-backed settles flanking the fireplace, a trestle table against one wall, and a smaller table that looked like a desk. And dotted throughout the room and in corners stood tall candlestands of iron.

Diana took a step forward and heard a rustling at her feet. She jumped back, but when she looked down she saw only bare wood under her feet.

Impatient, Weston took advantage of her hesitation to push past her. Diana tentatively placed one foot in front of her and this time not only heard but felt the rustle of straw. The floor was covered in rushes. Invisible rushes. Because whatever imagination in her had conjured up indistinct outlines of medieval furniture didn’t stretch so far as seeing straw on the floor—just hearing it and feeling it.

As Diana took another careful step, her frightened fascination with the rustling at her feet was swallowed up in a multitude of other sounds: the drumming of hooves on packed earth, the creak and murmur of leather saddles, and the iron jangle of armed riders.

Seized by a terror outside herself, Diana flew across the room and threw open a window. If the inside was a shifting jumble of impressions, both here and not here, outside was decidedly in the “what the hell is going on” camp. A fact that Diana noted only very vaguely in the part of her mind that remained under her control.

---