Eden Rising (The Eden Saga Book 5)

  Eden Rising

  MARILYN HARRIS

  © Marilyn Harris 1982

  Marilyn Harris has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Mortemouth, North Devon Coast, England June 4, 1874

  Eden Castle June 21, 1874

  La Rochelle House of Detention, Paris, France July 3, 1874

  Eden Castle July 28, 1874

  La Rochelle House of Detention, Paris, France September 26, 1874

  Eden Point October 15, 1874

  Eden Point October 22, 1874

  Eden Castle October 23, 1874

  Exmoor Road October 23, 1874

  Haunch of Venison Public House, Salisbury, England October 24, 1874

  Exmoor November 5, 1874

  Eden Point November 5, 1874

  Paris November 8, 1874

  Talbot House, Dublin, Ireland November 11, 1874

  London November 12, 1874

  Grosvenor Square, London November 12, 1874

  La Rochelle House of Detention, Paris November 13, 1874

  Monsieur DuCamp’s Lodging House, Paris November 14, 1874

  Paris November 14, 1874

  Eden Castle November 14, 1874

  La Rochelle House of Detention, Paris November 14, 1874

  Monsieur DuCamp’s Lodging House, Paris November 15, 1874 Three A.M.

  La Rochelle House of Detention, Paris November 15, 1874 Predawn

  Monsieur DuCamp’s Lodging House, Paris November 15, 1874. Dawn Dawn.

  La Rochelle House of Detention, Paris November 15, 1874. Dawn

  Paris November 15, 1874

  Monsieur DuCamp’s Lodging House, Paris November 15, 1874. Nine A.M.

  La Rochelle House of Detention, Paris November 15, 1874. Nine-fifteen A.M.

  Talbot House, Dublin, Ireland November 15, 1874

  Paris November 15, 1874

  Evening

  Grosvenor Square, London December 5, 1874

  London December 15, 1874

  Paris December 25, 1874

  London December 25, 1874

  Forbes Hall, Kent December 25, 1874

  Talbot House, Dublin January 4, 1875

  Calais, France March 16, 1875

  Forbes Hall, Kent March 25, 1875

  East London Salvation Mission, London March 25, 1875

  Whitechapel Infirmary for Men, London April 1, 1875

  Grosvenor Mansion, London April 2, 1875

  East London Salvation Mission, London April 2, 1875

  Whitechapel Infirmary for Men, London April 2, 1875

  East London Salvation Mission, London April 19, 1875

  East London Salvation Mission, London May 1, 1875

  London May 5, 1875

  Grosvenor Square, London May 6, 1875

  Whitechapel Street, London May 6, 1875

  Mortemouth, North Devon May 11, 1875

  Eden Rising, North Devon May 18, 1875

  Eden Rising, North Devon July 28, 1875

  Grosvenor Square, London August 4, 1875

  Talbot House, Dublin, Ireland August 19, 1875

  Eden Rising, North Devon September 6, 1875

  For Judge who makes everything possible.

  In those distant days, as in all other times and places where the mental atmosphere is changing, and men are inhaling the stimulus of new ideas, folly often mistook itself for wisdom, ignorance gave itself airs of knowledge, and selfishness, turning its eyes upward, called itself religion...

  Religious ideas have the fate of melodies which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, and out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable...

  The blessed work of helping the world forward happily does not wait to be done by perfect men...

  — George Eliot

  Mortemouth, North Devon Coast, England June 4, 1874

  Midnight She had been dreaming of men screaming and dying with open, untended wounds when the pounding sounded at the door and awakened her and she realized she was cold.

  “Who is it?” she gasped, fighting through the cobwebs of nightmare sleep. She sat quickly up and clutched the blanket to her, lost momentarily in the darkness of the small room which had been attached, like an afterthought, to the back side of the Mortemouth Methodist Church.

  An urgent male voice came faintly through the thick oak door. “Susan? Are you awake? You must come. Something terrible — up at Eden...

  She recognized the voice, Reverend Christopher, and recognized the message as well. Too often something terrible. Here. Down in the village. Up at Eden. Made no difference. In this world or in the shadowy realm of sleep, far too often something terrible...

  “Just a...” she called out incompletely, and swung her legs out from beneath the blanket and felt an objecting ache in her back from the hard lumpy mattress and thought with fleeting regret that when she'd been a girl it had made no difference where she'd slept. Now, at thirty-four —

  “Susan?” Reverend Christopher's voice came again, more urgent. “Are you there? We need you. Please...”

  “Yes,” she called back.

  In the unseasonable cold of early June she shivered and grasped the neck of the heavy muslin nightgown. As she hurried toward the door on feet which felt as though they were encased in ice, she tried to clear the last of the nightmare from her mind. The dream had been so real, as real as the war almost fifteen years ago, the senseless Crimean conflict, thousands of men screaming for the blessed mercy of death. Fifteen years ago? Had it been so long? Would it never fade and give her peace?

  “Susan? Please, can you...?”

  Again the male voice cut through her thoughts and, as her hands reached out for the heavy crosslatch, she wondered what precisely was the nature of this emergency. Was it Caroline Butler's baby in need of delivering? Or Sam Watkins losing his battle with the killing fever? Even in a village as small as Mortemouth, there was an abundance of human need. How presumptuous of Susan to think that she, a single woman, could do anything to help. Yet since the Crimea and Scutari and the profound influence of Miss Nightingale, the only course of action that had made sense to Susan Mantle had been a life dedicated to at least the illusion of service.

  In the dark she found the latch and with renewed purpose slid it noisily back. With both hands she pushed open the heavy door and found on the other side what she knew she'd find, the portly, rosy-cheeked Father Christmas visage of Reverend George Christopher, shepherd to the little Mortemouth Methodist Church, who now, upon seeing Susan clad only in her nightdress, stepped back, mild shock on his cherubic face.

  “What is it?” she asked quickly in an attempt to ease the shock and remind him that he had, most successfully, conveyed urgency.

  “It's... that is to say...”

  “I need light. May I borrow...?”

  “Of course,” he said, and blushed crimson as he extended the flickering lantern to her. The cold wind coming off the quay caused the flame to dance and in turn cast dancing shadows over his face and black coat. “I'm sorry to disturb - ”

  “It's all right,” she broke in, and tried to ease his embarrassment and hers as well. “What is it? Has there been an accident? Someone...?”

  “It's John Murrey Eden. Something... terrible...”

  Armed with light and with renewed conviction that there was divine work to be done in this life, she halted in the very act of closing the door.

  “Eden?” she repeated, peering through the dark. What could she possi
bly do for John Murrey Eden? For that matter, what could anyone do?

  She knew who he was, as did everyone in the West Country, knew as well what had happened to him in the last few years. In fact, she'd seen him first in that very hospital in Scutari that had been the scene of her recent nightmare.

  “Susan?” The urgent male voice turned suddenly considerate. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and heard the breathless quality of her own voice and wished the nightmare would leave her alone. Well, now it was time for her to turn her attention to Mad Box John, for that's what the children called John Murrey Eden, who lived at the top of the cliff walk in what was once the grandest castle in all of the West Country-in all of England, according to some.

  “Give me a minute to dress,” she said, and tried to convey to Reverend Christopher that she was back on track. “I'll do it quickly and leave the door open a crack so that you can tell me...”

  “No...”

  “...what happened. You said it was urgent,” she reminded him, and didn't give him a chance to protest further, and drew the door to within a foot of the latch and moved hurriedly back to the bed, taking the lantern with her. She spied the chair over which she'd placed her simple brown nurse's dress. Plain it was, but good fabric cost money, and she'd never had an excess of that.

  “Are you still there, Reverend Christopher?” she called out, and drew forward her thick petticoat and pulled it on beneath the nightdress.

  “Y-yes, but...”

  “What's happened? To Mr. Eden, I mean,” she repeated.

  “He...”

  At the same time, she heard other voices, male, approaching from the left corner of the church, hurrying down the cobble walk toward her room, where Reverend Christopher waited.

  One called out in clarion tones, “Is she...?”

  “Dressing. She'll...”

  “He's gone up now. There's quite a crowd gathering...”

  “It looks like he's got something...”

  “Terrible!”

  “There are children watching …

  “Get the children away!” she heard Reverend Christopher call out angrily over the puzzling and incoherent exchange. “Have their parents lost their minds? Tell them to take the children...”

  “Can't control them, Reverend,” someone called back. “They want to be there. They don't like him — you know that — feel he's responsible for...”

  As other voices swirled around the speaker, Susan drew down the brown dress over her head and welcomed its warmth and pondered briefly the mixed blessings of her profession as traveling nurse and midwife on the West Country circuit. The only aspect of life that seemed to visit the village with any degree of regularity was tragedy and its equally black twin, disaster, like the mysterious disappearance of herring last year. For a community dependent upon the small fish, which once ran in schools of thousands, it seemed whimsical of God to one day and without reason cause them to disappear. And where the people might have turned to the soil to supply them with what the ocean now denied them, Fate then sent them three devastating winters and three equally wet summers where nothing had grown, but only molded and rotted in the ground.

  Though only a young man in the Crimea, in his early twenties, John Murrey Eden had looked fifty. Miss Nightingale, as Susan recalled, had taken a special interest in him, having known his father, Edward Eden, in one of the Ragged Schools of London.

  “Perceive the links in the chain,” Miss Nightingale had said. “His father shaped my soul. Now I’m responsible for his son...”

  “Susan, are you ready?”

  “Coming,” she called, stooping to retrieve the lantern.

  “Susan, are you ready? We must hurry.”

  Without answering she drew up the hood of her cloak over her long, still-mussed hair and hurried through the partially open door and looked out over the shadowy narrow courtyard to see a large gathering of twenty-five, perhaps thirty, men, all looking back at her. A few carried torches which lay flat under the duress of the cold north wind and sent hordes of ghosts dancing over the plain brown brick walls of the church.

  “Ah, good,” Reverend Christopher said vaguely, and started to reach for the lantern, but Susan shifted it to the other hand, knowing that she, not he, would set the pace up the steep and treacherous cliff walk which led to Eden Castle.

  Without a word she hurried down the four narrow steps past Reverend Christopher, who looked relieved that at last someone else had taken the lead, and saw as well the men part for her, and hurried through them down the narrow passage which led to the cobblestones, which in turn led the length of Mortemouth to the foot of Eden Point and the narrow goat trail which spiraled upward to the imposing castle that had cast its shadow, for better or worse, over the citizens of Mortemouth since the twelfth century. As she walked, a sizable tail of excited men and boys gathered behind her.

  When had it happened? When had Susan Mantley daughter of an Exeter farmer, become someone to follow?

  Suddenly she shivered. On more than one occasion God had, contrary to rumor, sent her more than she could shoulder. It was a lovely myth that He was incapable of misjudging one's capacity to endure and prevail. Her ordination had been long and haphazard and, occasionally filled with defeat.

  “Clear the way!” she heard a man shout close beside her as they turned into the cliff walk and encountered a chattering group of young people. A girl, whom she recognized as Milly Slade, appeared to be weeping softly in a young man's arms.

  “What is it, Milly?” she asked, and was not given a chance to finish.

  “Oh, it's tumble, Miss Mantle!” Milly sobbed. “He's goin' to drop her, or worse, jump with her. I know he is. He's daft, you know, tur-rible daft, has been for years.”

  Susan tried to make sense of the gibberish. Her? What her? She had understood that John Murrey Eden inhabited Eden Castle alone, with the exception of an occasional brave visitor from London.

  Now, drawing a long breath, Susan forced herself to move past the attraction of young people and braced her body for the first steep incline of the cliff walk.

  With conscious effort she slowed her step and felt the “tail” of nervously chattering men adjust their pace as well, and looked ahead to see two old women, one lantern between them, clinging to the cliff side of the walk, their sunken eyes glittering feverishly in the excitement of the night.

  “It's too cold for you,” Susan called out kindly, feeling the unseasonable chill in her own bones, knowing they must be dangerously cold. Why were they out and about at this hour? They had no business...

  As Susan drew near, she suggested over the shrill wind, “Go on home with you both, please, to a toasty fire and a cuppa - ”

  “I served him, you know, I did,” announced one old crone over the wind. “I was in the banqueting hall the very day Lady Harriet looked upon him for the last time.” Suddenly the old woman crossed herself and shivered anew in a way that had nothing to do with the wind and clung more fiercely to her companion.

  “He tweren't a bad young man,” she added, smacking her lips over toothless gums. “There's more of his father in him than anyone wants to know. It's her he's got now. It's her...”

  The crowd behind pressed against Susan, having caught up. In the faint light she saw their excited expressions, drawn-down lips, glittering eyes. The old woman who claimed to have served John Murrey Eden stepped closer. In the spill from the lantern Susan detected a bluish tint to her lips.

  “I know what's goin' on up there, I do,” she vowed. “'Tis a wrestling match atwixt God and Satan. They both want his soul, don't you know.”

  At that moment a blood-chilling wail struck her ear, a male cry, or so it seemed.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the two old women cross themselves again with bony fingers upon skeletal and sunken breasts. “I'd stay away if I were you, pet,” one advised earnestly. “Satan is winning.” She tapped the side of her nose. “But then, he always wins, now, don't he
?”

  Hurry, a small voice of reason advised quietly inside her head. The old woman was right on one count. The persistence of evil in the world was awe-inspiring. And where evil did not triumph, all too often passivity did.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a close knot of climbers up ahead. She'd seen them earlier but never dreamed she'd overtake them. There were four men in all, all weaving slightly with that telltale lack of balance which marks inebriation. Obviously they'd stopped at the Green Man before deciding to go where the true excitement was. Now in their staggering she observed from several yards back that they were occupying the entire path, arms locked. If they were aware of her fast approach, they gave no indication of it.

  She broke speed and felt trapped, caught between the arm-locked men up ahead and the pushing, scrambling crowd behind.

  “Coming through, please...”

  ...and saw the man on the extreme left turn slowly as though he wasn't quite certain whether the voice was real or merely part of the wind. Then the second turned, then the third, and at last the fourth, though there was a painful collision with the jagged cliff wall as the path suddenly narrowed, and all four jockeyed for their share of the limited space.

  As the fourth rubbed his shoulder, the other three staggered about in a limited circle, all squinting at her, their faces ruddy and weathered from constant exposure to the wind. She recognized them as fishermen from Mortemouth.

  “Who...?” one slurred, and leaned heavily upon his mates.

  “It's only me. Miss Mantle,” she called out, smiling, pushing back the hood of her cloak so that they might see her clearly and recognize her. Everyone did, from the Bristol Channel to Clovelly. Now she lifted her face to the sliver of a moon in the hope that her familiar features would be illuminated, the drunken men would recognize her and let her pass with a minimum of difficulty.

  “I said, who...?” one of the men slurred again, and squinted into the darkness and, in his eagerness to see, lost his balance and would have toppled over the edge of the cliff walk if it hadn't been for the quick action of his mates.