Wessingham Awaits (Book 1, Music)
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Authors: Owen Maddox
Wessingham Awaits
by Owen Maddox
Book 1
Music
The Sun Valley Medallion
is an imprint and registered trademark
of OwenMaddox
Publishers
Nashville, TN 37212
www.linkedin.com/pub/owen-maddox/23/6aa/2b3
First published in the United States of America
by Owen Maddox 2013.
Copyrigh
t
©
Owen Maddox 2013.
Owen Maddox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ALSO BY OWEN MADDOX:
Wessingham Awaits (Book 2, Poetry)
Wessingham Awaits (Book 3, Chivalry)
Wessingham Awaits (Book 4, Adventure)
Wessingham Awaits (Book 5, Castles)
Wessingham Awaits (Book 6, Magic)
Wessingham Awaits (Book 7, Angels)
Wessingham Awaits (Book 8, War)
Wessingham Awaits (Book 9, Love)
Wessingham Awaits (The Complete Novel)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
To Heidi,
my beloved wife,
friend,
and ideal reader.
WESSINGHAM AWAITS
PROLOGUE
Sometimes, when I am in a quiet place, alone, and I think back to Henry Godwin, when I think of his Wessingham, I hear the waxing of choral music. It resonates high in the loft of my imagination, if not memory, my inner sanctuary. The excitement and expectations come back to me, the naivety and vulnerability, the fear and hurt, and yes, the anger.
I had little choice, no resistance—for what girl does not want to become a princess?
Sometimes, then, the music is outright dark and overpowering, in a minor key, escalating like a tribal drum only to fade and return at another moment on wings in a different light.
It is all sacred to me now, the good and bad, however I might make sense of it—his claim that “Once upon a time there was a great king. The king lived in a great castle. The castle was in a great and mountainous kingdom. And yet this kingdom was hidden from rest of the world. This kingdom,” Henry said at twelve years of age, “was hidden somewhere in the United States of America.”
By now you know it is the stuff of Appalachian lore, a tale told not by idiots, but by drunkards, a legend created just as surely from the moonshiner’s still. How else to pass the time? Well, rest assuredly my love, this is not idle entertainment. I have a tumor growing inside of me, and there are things that I must tell you before I am gone.
On the hour of my death, you will gain command of a vast fortune, an estate that exceeds all reason and experience. The sum at your disposal would make Croesus curse, Vanderbilt blink, and Rockefeller drop his morning cup of coffee. Of more value, and hence importance, you will inherit the story contained in this volume and the awesome responsibility that accompanies it. If ever there was a man who must persevere amidst great adversity, he is now you.
In my experience, transcending one’s assumed limitations requires a love equally transcendent, a love that does not falter in the face of loneliness and hardship, but invigorates and assuages like the fortuitous wind that saves the blistered sailor. To accomplish great deeds, we must first feel worthy of those accomplishments.
Along with the unsettling revelations contained herein, you are about to receive charge of a legacy that seems wholly unimaginable, much less manageable. Daunting though it will be, isolated though you may feel, if you continue to love and trust yourself as I have, my story, now yours, older than Britain herself, will continue.
Godspeed, my love. I will be with you.
Elizabeth Favian 1928
“Facile cred, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate.
Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit?
Et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera?
Quid agunt? Quae loca habitant?
”
Thomas Burnet,
Archaeologia Philosophicae
,
London 1692
“I can easily believe that there are more invisible than visible beings in the universe.
But who will describe to us their families, ranks, affinities, differences, and functions?
What do they do? Where do they live?”
WESSINGHAM AWAITS
BOOK
1
MUSIC
1
Once upon a time, in the year 1890 to be exact, a peculiar little girl named Elizabeth Bowyer received a transparent mirror for her fourth birthday. As strange as it might sound, her parents had cut a rectangular hole in the wall separating the parlor from the convalescent room, and over it they placed the mirror, framed as ornately as any portrait. When visitors called, they saw reflections of themselves in the mirror, their cups of tea and broad hats of ostrich feathers, not the homely little girl staring at them from the other side.
It was fair to suspect that even the closest friends of the Bowyer family were not altogether aware of Elizabeth’s existence. They knew of Helen, the prettiest of the Bowyer children. They knew of Claude, the smartest, of Warren, the most ambitious, and of Clarence, the most athletic. But few had met me, “Little Lizzie,” whom they would have undoubtedly called “the unfortunate one,” as the Duchess, my mother, had, or “retarded,” as Dr. Bowyer, my father, expressed in medical parlance. To him, I was a veritable mute, a child who, for a lack of sense, longingly stared through people’s souls, making them wholly uncomfortable. When the callers left, I might move from the mirror to my spot at the window overlooking the carriages and trolleys of Broad Street of downtown Richmond, Virginia. The Duchess, preoccupied with issuing edicts to the housekeeper, might fail to notice my brothers, who usually started by waving a hand in front of my face—stoic as the King’s Guard—then graduated to flicking my nose or ears, and finally to bouncing a rubber ball off my skull whilst singing.
Mean Brothers
:
Little Lizzie’s lost in time.
She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t whine.
The Doctor thinks she’s good as dead
Since Mother dropped her on her head.
My mother, of course, was not a
bona fide
Duchess. She earned the title more as a slanderous nickname, first by hiring a reputable crackbrained genealogist to unearth a slender, if not improbable, connection to Bess of Hardwick, whose greatest talent, you might remember, was her ability to befriend, marry, and bury a string of wealthy barons. Naturally, that was all the proof my mother required, having driven her two previous husbands to their graves. My father, her third husband, was more reluctant to draw such parallels. Secondly, my mother required of those servants who reported to her, namely the housekeeper and sometimes the butler, to address her as “My Lady” and to speak of her as “Lady Bowyer.” This practice culminated one holiday afternoon in the kitchen when, just as my mother was making one of her rare appearances, the housekeeper dutifully informed the chef and kitchen staff that there would be no time off that evening. A scullery maid, unaware of the high brass now standing behind her, retorted, “Praise Jesus, I love our Grand Duchess. What a wonderful woman. Is she ever going to allow me some tickle time with the husband? It’s been five days.”
My mother cleared her throat and offered the following pronouncement: “
Our Grand Duchess
sincerely regrets that her dinner plans might infringe on anyone’s
personal
duties.” She winked at the startled scullery maid. “Lest it be forgotten
,
the Grand Duchess
appreciates
such unremitting deference for her rank and station as the mistress of this house. That’s quite clever missy. You’re a smart one.” Not only did the scullery maid in question keep her job, but she received a promotion to housemaid the following day. Henceforth, the lower servants referred to my mother as the Duchess, with the children, then guests, eventually following suit—most everyone, I suppose, except me. I never said a word.
2
Call it a mother’s intuition, but the Duchess began to suspect I wasn’t retarded when she caught me studying the pages of Dr. Bowyer’s
Scientific American
. It was an article on cloud types, accompanied by respective drawings of cumulus, stratus, cirrus and so forth. Only the pages that captivated me had no drawings and were purely text. The Duchess lovingly offered, “Lizzie, do you think you’re
reading
?” Yet, when I paid her no attention, and my eyes, upon closer inspection, seemed to be moving from side to side, she stood from her throne and proclaimed, “Lizzie, you’re reading!” I could neither confirm nor deny.
