The Rose Garden

I was hesitant, remembering Mark’s scrumpy, but I knew that this was more than just the offer of a drink, it was the offer of a hand in truce. I couldn’t turn it down. ‘Yes, thank you.’

Which was why, when Daniel Butler finally came in from whatever chores he had been doing, he took one look at my eyes – which looked far too bright even from my side – and lifted his eyebrows.

‘Take your boots from under there,’ said Fergal, stopping his friend from taking a seat. ‘Have you no manners at all? We’ve a lady among us, we’ll dine at the table we’re meant to be dining at.’

That turned out to be in the long room beyond the pantry that in my time was a games room, but in this time had wood-panelled walls, not wallpaper, and shutters on the windows, and where Uncle George’s billiard table should have been, right at the centre of the room, there stood a trestle table built of heavy oak, with ten imposing chairs.

Fergal set us three places around the one end. ‘You’ll pardon the dust,’ he said, giving the table a wipe that whirled particles upward to dance in the light. ‘We’d a girl coming up from the village to clean for us, but her da’s fallen ill and she’s needed at home, so we’ve had to make do for ourselves this last while.’

It was a big house for two men on their own. When I’d visited Trelowarth as a child there’d been a local woman, Mrs Jenner, who had done most of the housework, and even today Mark and Susan had cleaners come in every week.

Daniel Butler took the end seat with a smile and told me, ‘Do not let him stir your sympathies. He charms a girl up here with regularity, and ’tis the rare occasion that one leaves without first taking up a broom.’

‘You’re telling secrets, now,’ said Fergal, but he winked as he went out to fetch our dinner from the kitchen.

I looked at Daniel Butler’s handsome face and asked him, disbelieving, ‘Fergal charms the girls up here?’

‘He does. He is not always so ill-natured, as you seem to have discovered for yourself.’ The smile lingered in his eyes. ‘What were you drinking?’

‘Cider.’

‘Then you have impressed him, for the cider in our cellars here was made by his own hand, and he does guard it as a dragon guards its gold. He would not offer it to anyone he did not feel was worthy.’

‘Yes, well, I’m honoured but I hope he doesn’t make a habit of it. Cider makes my head spin.’

‘Do you have it in your own time?’

‘Cider? Yes. It makes my head spin there, as well.’

‘So there are some things at least that are the same for you.’ Beneath the lightness of his voice I thought I caught a trace of something like a scientific interest. ‘I should think it must feel strange, to step into another age and find yourself so far removed from all you know. Like being shipwrecked in a foreign land.’

It was a good analogy. ‘It feels like that a bit.’ I hadn’t really stopped to analyse it all that much. A part of me, I knew, was still adjusting to the shock of being tossed around in time, and I could only cope with every situation as it came. But now I came to think of it, it was like being washed up on the shore of some strange country not my own. Except, ‘The house is still the same,’ I said. ‘At least, I know my way around the rooms. That helps a little. And the fact that you believe me, that helps too.’ I hadn’t realised how much that last fact meant to me until I’d said the words out loud.

I looked away from him, and coughed to clear my throat, and changed the subject as I glanced around the room for inspiration. ‘Have you lived here at Trelowarth long?’

‘Twelve years. It was left me by an uncle who desired I should settle myself to a more honest trade.’

But before I could ask him, ‘More honest than what?’ Fergal came with an armful of plates heaped with food.

‘There,’ he said, as he set mine in front of me, ‘best to enjoy that, I’ve nothing so fancy to serve you tomorrow. It’s stirabouts now, till I’m next to the market.’

It was plain food, but flavourful. Fergal had basted the roast birds with honey, and seasoned the barley and vegetables with unknown spices and herbs that made everything sit on my stomach with comfortable warmth. I ate with knife and spoon, as both of them were doing, grateful for the light ale Daniel Butler offered me in place of cider. Although the small tin tumbler it was served in gave the ale a faint metallic taste, it was at least a drink that, slowly sipped, could leave me sober.

The men drank wine, a rich red wine they drank from tumblers like my own, of beaten tin. As Fergal poured the dregs into his own cup, he remarked, ‘We’ll soon be out of this as well. We’ve but a single case remaining in the cellar.’

Daniel Butler said, ‘’Tis good we’ve got your cider, then.’

‘The devil you do. Any man will be losing his hand if he touches those kegs.’

‘Do you see?’ Daniel Butler directed that comment at me, with a smile. ‘Did I not say he guarded his casks like a dragon?’

‘Ay, and did you think to tell her why I do that, now? Did you say what your brother did the one time that I turned my back? And didn’t he have all my cider on the Sally and away on the next tide without so much as a farewell and by-your-leave?’

‘Well, that is Jack for you.’

‘Ay, steal the coins right off a dead man’s eyes and do it smiling, so he would.’ But there was still a grudging admiration in his tone, from which I guessed he couldn’t help but like the man they spoke of. Then he seemed to think of something. ‘Jesus, Danny, he’ll be coming back at any time now.’