Ashton Park (54 page)

Libby placed her head against Michael’s chest.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.

Libby brushed at her eyes with her fingers. “I need a few minutes.”

“We shouldn’t go on keeping this to ourselves. We ought to tell your parents.”

“No. They’ll only worry.”

“They’ll pray too. And you’ll have your mother to talk to about it.”

She shook her head. “It will upset them. And I have Em to talk to. That’s enough. Too much talk only makes it worse. There’s nothing anyone can do. I can’t bear children and that’s that.”

“I love you so much.” He cupped her face with its tears and its pain in his hands. “Think of the crazy way we met.”

She laughed while she continued to wipe her fingers across her eyes. “We should never have fallen in love. I don’t know how you did that to me.”

“Listen. British doctors are great. But we have some pretty incredible physicians in New York and Boston and there’s a medical center in Rochester, Minnesota, I’ve read about. I want to take you there.”

“We can’t.”

“Of course we can.”

“Ben and Kipp count on you.”

“They can bring Irving or Wales or Hannam up from London. Or train Edward if they need another pilot.”

“Please. I can’t keep laughing and crying at the same time. Edward flying? In any case, he’s told Father he wants to go into politics.”

“The airfields will make out okay. Let’s do it, Lib. New York is amazing. You’d love it. And the docs might find something the fellows here missed.”

“I don’t think we can.”

“You keep saying that. What we can’t do is delay the welcome-home dinner for Edward and Charlotte and Owen. Your dad will be champing at the bit to give his speeches and his prayers.”

Libby sat up. “So he will. We can discuss America and her doctors later.”

He helped her to her feet. “So long as you come up with a better argument than simply saying,
We can’t, Michael, we can’t.
”

“I’ll work on it while I’m acting perfectly happy downstairs. Owen makes it easier. He is such a lovely baby boy.”

Michael grinned. “Just wait until you see yours.”

“Do you know something the best doctors in London don’t?” She patted him on the cheek. “Thanks for cheering me up. But I’ll need a moment to clean up my face.”

“You look great.”

“You always say that. I look like I’ve been dropped on my head.”

“And I look like I’ve been flying upside down. We work well together. We’ll steal the show from Eddie and Char.”

Libby sat down at her vanity and began to dab at her eyes with a soft cloth. “Eddie, is it? He’ll absolutely love that. Do try and get on better with him than you did the last time you two met, shall we? It’s Edward. Ed - ward. Nothing else will do.”

Sir William tinkled his glass with a spoon. “So a toast.” He stood, glass in hand. “To Edward and Charlotte, who have returned from their sojourn in Canada with a greater gift than any of us could have imagined—young Owen.”

“Cheers.”

“God bless you.”

“Well done.”

“And they have returned to an England where my good old Conservative Party is finally in power again. All the best to the new prime minister, Mr. Bonar Law, who is, in fact, Canadian-born like Owen.”

People clapped and someone shouted, “Hear, hear!”

Edward looked at Charlotte, who smiled and nodded, one of her hands resting on Owen’s arm as he sat happily in his high chair. Edward rose to his feet.

“Father.” Edward lifted his glass. “I look around the table and here is my brother Kipp with his lovely wife, Christelle, and their beautiful boy, Matthew, hardly a few months older than Owen. Across from me, my sister Victoria with her husband, Ben, and their bright lad, Ramsay. Down at the end are Emma and Jeremiah and their strapping young boys Peter and James and Billy. Here beside me are Michael and Libby—I know they are just waiting for the right moment to pounce and surprise us with triplets.”

Everyone roared. Libby offered a small smile.

Edward carried on. “Once Catherine and Albert join us this weekend we’ll have their child with us as well, although she’s still in hiding. I say
she
because we’re still looking for the first granddaughter in the Danforth family and it may be that Belfast wins the prize. Though Robbie and Shannon might have something to say about that. A granddaughter born in Jerusalem—what do you say to that, Father?”

Sir William smiled. “Amen.”

“It will be a full table once Robbie’s and Shannon’s ship docks at Liverpool. It will be an early Christmas indeed.” Edward raised his glass higher. “Father and mother, Sir Arthur, Lady Grace, Aunt Holly, my brothers, my sisters, my brother Kipp’s wife, my sisters’ husbands, and all my wonderful nephews—it’s good to be home.”

As those seated at the table cheered Sir William gestured to Tavy and whispered something. James was seated to one side of his grandfather and Sir William put an arm around the young boy’s shoulders.

“Ice cream!” he announced. “We never have enough of it. Always the best ending to any feast. Especially if you are five, eh, Peter and James?”

“Yes, sir!” they both shouted at the same time.

Emma laughed. “Hush. You’ll soon be as noisy as the adults in this family.”

“No, it is a night for noise, a night for celebration. Elizabeth, I’m not exaggerating, am I?”

Seated at Sir William’s other side his wife patted his hand. “Not at all. Everyone agrees this is a time to lift our voices. Edward and Charlotte are back here among us with their son, all three looking splendid—the mountain air truly agreed with them.”

Maids and footmen began serving dishes of vanilla and chocolate ice cream that Mrs. Seabrooke wheeled in on a cart. Conversation and laughter continued as spoons clicked. Tavy stepped up to Sir William’s chair as he matched his grandson James spoonful for spoonful.

Sir William did not lift his head. “What’s that, Tavy? I’m in a race here.”

“The telephone, Sir William.”

“What’s that? Can’t it wait a moment?”

“Scotland Yard is on the line, sir.”

Sir William put down his spoon. “Are you sure, Tavy?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sir William rose. “Excuse me. I must get to the telephone.” He glanced at his grandson. “You can finish that bowl and we’ll start on another once I’m back.”

“What is it, Father?” asked Victoria.

“I don’t know, really.”

He left the dining hall with Tavy. The talk at the table had been so loud no one but Lady Elizabeth had heard what Tavy had said to her husband. She poked at her white ice cream with her spoon, turning over in her mind why the police from London might be calling. Was it something to do with Parliament? The new prime minister? She hoped nothing had happened to Lord and Lady Scarborough or their daughter Caroline—had Tanner Buchanan popped up again and committed some crime?

When Sir William returned he stood very tall and still at the head of the table, looking at the far end of the room, until one by one people noticed and quieted down, realizing he had something to say. Lady Elizabeth laid down her spoon, then picked it up again.

“What is it, my dear?” she asked. “What was the call about?”

“Why, it was…” He stopped. Then started again. “It was Scotland Yard.” James stared at his grandfather’s face and reached up with his small hand. Sir William took it. “Albert was ambushed this afternoon when he left his office at the shipyards. He was getting into his car. They were parked nearby.” He gazed around the table, bewildered, his eyes drifting from one face to another, finally coming to rest on his wife. “Catherine was at home. The Royal Ulster Constabulary came to the house. He’s dead. Our daughter’s Irishman is dead, Elizabeth.”

December 1922

St. Mark’s-among-the-Starlings was packed on the day of the funeral, Wednesday, December twenty-seventh. Despite the driving rain and sleet people spilled over onto the steps and grounds of the church and huddled under enormous black umbrellas. Inside sat King George V and his son Albert as well as the prime minister, Bonar Law. Jeremiah led the service in his black robes with white Geneva bands tied at his throat. Catherine’s sisters and family crowded around her in the front pew, Emma holding her hand.

Although there had been talk of burying Albert at a cemetery in Belfast it was Catherine’s decision that his body be placed in the consecrated ground by the chapel at Ashton Park. “I will not be staying at the house in Belfast,” she said, “but I will always return to Ashton Park wherever else I may be. I want him to be there waiting for me.” The hearse led the procession of motorcars over the roads to the estate, all the headlights gleaming in the rain.

Harrison and Todd Turpin had dug the grave the day before and covered it with a canvas tarpaulin. The burial ceremony was private, so many of the people who had followed in their cars parked at the side of the road and either remained in their vehicles or stepped outside to stand under their umbrellas. The grave could be seen if a person stood farther up the road past the oak trees, and that is where scores of cars ended up and hundreds of men and women and children. Many wanted to see the king and the prime minister. Others were touched by the tragedy of the young Danforth woman, carrying her murdered husband’s child, standing in the rain with her head bowed, dark red roses in her arms.

The king and his son stood by the grave along with the prime minister and other members of the government to which Sir William also belonged. The pallbearers brought the black coffin from the hearse to the cemetery under the leafless branches of the ash trees—Kipp, Ben, Edward, Robbie, Michael and, in a rare act by a member of the clergy, Jeremiah, disdaining the weight of the coffin and the rain that pounded on his bare head and robe. They set Albert down by headstones that had been placed in the earth a thousand years before, names and epitaphs washed away by hundreds of storms.

Water covered Jeremiah’s round glasses so he removed them. He did not bring the Book of Common Prayer out from under his robe but recited from memory. “
I am the Resurrection and the Life
,” he began. “
He that believeth in me, yea, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall not die forever.

“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he flieth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we be in death: of whom may we seek for succor but of thee, O Lord, which for our sins justly art displeased. Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful savior, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts: shut not up thy merciful eyes to our prayers: but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful savior, thou most worthy judge eternal, suffer us not at our last hour for any pains of death to fall from thee.”

Harrison and Todd Turpin pulled the canvas tarpaulin aside. The pallbearers lifted the coffin and set it down on two ropes that Harrison and Todd and two footmen held taut. Slowly Albert was lowered into the grave.

“You do not have to be the one to cast earth on his coffin,” whispered Emma. “Let your brothers do it.”

Catherine’s eyes behind the black veil were as dark as her clothing and the umbrellas and the storm. “Do you think he would have done less for me, Em?”

One hand on her stomach she bent and took up a handful of mud and clay. She dropped it onto his coffin, now at the bottom of the grave, and spoke words only Emma could hear: “
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Even as it hath pleased the Lord, so cometh things to pass. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Kipp and Edward and Robbie also scooped up handfuls of wet earth and let them fall onto the coffin. At Edward’s encouragement, Ben and Michael did the same, and finally Sir William. Jeremiah, still reciting from memory, stood at the head of the grave and, looking at Catherine, said, “
Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed: we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be like to his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”

To everyone’s surprise, the king, shrouded by a large umbrella wielded by an army officer in full dress uniform, spoke the next set of words of the burial service: “
I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. Even so saith the Spirit, that they rest from their labors.”

“Amen,” responded Sir William.

The king looked toward Catherine. When she saw his gaze she mouthed the words
thank you
and bowed her head to him. He nodded and lifted his hand in a gesture of blessing and sympathy.

“Shall I sing now, Cath?” Victoria was beside her. “Or would you prefer I didn’t?”