Transition Plan Chapter 21 - First Homecoming Part 8: Traveling Incognito
After two more days at the Porter estate, it was the appointed time to travel north, nearly to the Scottish border. They spent the time in between riding, hunted one day together with the hounds, and explored the extent of family property together.
To conceal their appearances better from any prying eyes as they prepared to travel to his homeland, they dressed in drab commoners outfits, and took a generic carriage ride and a fair amount of luggage to the station with them. All the household staff knew Jane and Jonathan intended to take up residence in Castle Greystoke, so it was an especially tearful goodbye for Elisabeth. Jane had other ideas in their private time together to say goodbye.
Elisabeth cried, "Jane dear, less than a week after the happiest day of my life to see you alive and married, I am once again frightened for your safety and sad that I may never see you again."
"Elisabeth, you have not just served me as staff. You have been my mother time and again when she was gone. I cannot bear our separation, but I must follow my husband. He is my whole life now," Jane expressed her heartfelt feelings for Elisabeth's role in her life.
Elisabeth's voice quivered, "I know, that is the way things are. And I can tell you are everything to him too, dear. That's the way love should be. Your mother would have been so proud. But now, dear, you must be on your way. Jonathan needs you more now than ever. I know you are strong and can stand against those terrible people."
"But when our business against them is concluded successfully, I want you to come with me to Castle Greystoke," Jane requested purposefully.
"What did you say, Lady Jane?" asked a very shocked Elisabeth.
Jane repeated emphatically, "When it is safe, I want you to move to Castle Greystoke with us. Join the staff. Be my head housekeeper there, and come back here whenever we are gone if you are lonely for home. I know we will go back and forth to Africa and England for the remainder of our lives. I can see it in Tarzan's eyes."
"Tarzan?" puzzled the old housekeeper.
"Jonathan's jungle name. Only you and Daddy know."
Elisabeth's spirits rose, but it was still so surprising to her at this new turn of events, "That's a powerful name for him, Lady Jane. Won't there be someone like me there already to take care of the Lady of the house?"
Jane noted, "For Agnes Clayton, not for me. Do you believe I would keep Agnes' housekeeper for an instant after she is gone? I could not possibly trust someone who cared for the conspirators."
Elisabeth was very nervous but excited at the same time, "I… well… I… uh… this is all so sudden. Leaving here after so many years… uh…. I don't know if I can, even with no ties here in London beyond your family."
Jane continued to emphasize her great need for her housekeeper, "I won't be here at the Porter estate anymore to tend to but for holidays, Elisabeth. I will always be at Jonathan's side now. What would you do with yourself? Daddy has all the help he needs. I need someone. Someone I can trust with family affairs. Someone who knows everything about me, even all my bad habits. I need you, Elisabeth. Please tell me 'yes'."
"Yes!" announced Elisabeth after only a moment's more hesitation, and the two women hugged and started crying and laughing together.
From nearby, Tarzan rolled his eyes, and thought, "They all really do that. Terk would be so amused."
The Professor said goodbye to Tarzan and Jane, as they seated themselves in the carriage, "Please take care of yourselves. Those who control your family wealth now are more ruthless than John Clayton himself."
"We will be in good hands with d'Arnot. He has a lot of young strong mariners that will do anything he asks. He's our best link with the family."
They arrived at the train station. The steam engine fascinated Tarzan, and he looked at it warily.
Jane explained, "With the steam boiler, it gives the machine the power of a 1000 gorillas. It is much like but smaller than the boat's steam engine."
The train conductor guided them to their seats, and collected their tickets, but Tarzan quickly returned to the open entrance to the passenger car. He was very curious about the train, leaned out the steps of one of the cars, and listened to the shrill whistle announcing departure, the powerful chugging and grinding of metal gears, pistons, and wheels against the steel rails. About a year ago he would have responded by mimicking every sound of the train exactly, but he knew to restrain himself now, with a knowing glance between him and Jane.
"I would have liked to have known you when you were ten, Jonathan. You simply enjoy everything in life. Things all the rest of us take for granted. That's one thing that I do so love about you."
"I would know nothing of this life without you Jane," he said, causing her to hug and kiss him.
The conductor interrupted them with a tap, speaking loudly over the roar of the train noises, "I am sorry, but I am going to have you return to your seats, now, Monsieur and Madame. We are under way and it is not safe to stand here."
The clickety-click of the train on the tracks and the undulations and motion of the cars and the engine were therapeutic. As they traveled the many miles through the countryside, Tarzan admired the more open forest and cultivated lands, but remained anxious in their private first class cabin for the uncertainty of what he would discover of his heritage, and the threats aligned against them. There were only a few stops along the way, and they enjoyed a first class lunch and bottle of wine together. But she could see him fretting.
"It will be all right Tarzan. Everything in the law favors us," Jane soothed his arm and tried to reassure him. She leaned against him, and he savored that caress.
"That is not what worries me, Jane. These people operate outside of the law. What they did led to my father's death, even with all his experience. How can I expect to do any better against them? Look how easily my cousin John duped us."
"We were both different and more innocent people then, Jonathan. We will prevail because your father was an astute man but as wonderful as he was – he was still not you. And you know what is lined up against us. He saw it too late, and had too little help."
They arrived at their destination. D'Arnot met them at train stop, and he guided them quietly away from the crowd. Tarzan kept his face wrapped in the scarf, and commoners cap low over his brow and eyes. Jane wore a woolen head wrap and scarf to hide her features too. Cedric's people would wonder why any Porter family member would be here.
The Captain gave explicit instructions to the young couple, "Jane, you will travel in this carriage for hire with me. M'lady, I am sorry that you must hide in this compartment during our journey so that you are not seen. Cedric's spies are everywhere from here to the estate. It is undignified travel but it must be done."
Jane smiled in support of the Captain, "If it helps Jonathan get his estate back, I would crawl through a peat bog naked in freezing rain. And enjoy it."
"Lady Jane, I do truly believe that you would," he chuckled as Tarzan grinned at her.
"We will store your luggage in this second carriage until we establish your residence there. Tarzan, you will go with that carriage, and my colleagues, and approach the Castle another way few know of," and as if on cue, a number of darkly dressed sailors showed themselves briefly and disappeared within the shuttered carriage.
"I am ready, Captain," said Tarzan confidently.
The Captain continued to remind them of the final plan, "I always travel light in my visits to the estate. I wander in and out, and have gotten pretty good at babbling these days. They think that I have gone somewhat crazy at the loss of your father and while they trust me as a ship's captain, and I only ever follow orders they give me, they believe I am incapable of conspiracy. I believe there is some kind of major meeting of the Executors of the estate that Cedric is running today. I hope we will see who they are and be able to stop this as it develops."
Well into their ride in the country, Castle Greystoke and its surrounding buildings loomed huge as the only structure for miles aside from the commoners' huts and homes. It was truly enormous. Jane stared out a peep-hole in her hidden compartment, and could only think in awe of the extent of wealth she had married into. It was composed entirely of multi-color brown, tan, and grey-tan stones, a slate shingle roof, and had many turrets, parapets, a huge tower, and was covered with multi-paned glass windows.
The roofline of the Castle was studded with battlements, a leftover relic of days when the Scots would stand and defend the manor with the earliest Lords of Greystoke. A huge grouping of chimneys belied what must be thirty or more interior rooms. There was an expansive, heavily forested frozen lake behind it, and the snow-covered Scottish highlands rose 1200 feet above the dwelling miles distant. She knew those mountains and all the forest now belonged to Tarzan and – she had to remind herself - to her, and that he would be secretly approaching the Castle from behind in that forest with d'Arnot's sailors. The grounds were completely manicured, and there were walls and stairs surrounding the mansion. Sheep and cows grazed, and horses wandered freely.
Jane could see the remains of what were at one time vast moats and earthworks, converted now into several decorative ponds. She could imagine a more ancient version of Castle Greystoke under siege from more visible enemies, with a drawbridge and thousands of stakes in the earthen mounds, protected by trebuchets and boiling oil to intimidate their enemies gathering by musky fires to storm the gates. She allowed herself the image of being stripped to her waist in a wolf skin loincloth of the ancient Scots, barefooted and painted blue from head to toe, and wielding her bow and arrow in defense of her Lord's manor. She chuckled quietly knowing that life in the jungle with him had not been far different from that, and grinned knowing all too well what Tarzan would think of her in blue body paint and basically nothing else.
There were many carriages parked in front of the estate. It was evident that something was brewing. At the gate the Captain opened the gate lock. She closed the peep-hole, and awaited her signal to begin the diversion.
John Clayton's widow Agnes looked out the window and noted d'Arnot's horse-drawn carriage's solitary approach.
Cedric walked up beside her at the window and asked, "Who is that coming? All the others are here now."
"Oh, Cedric, it's just the Captain," she said dismissively.
"Who invited him?" Cedric growled.
Agnes scoffed, "He's harmless - let him come. He just wanders the castle and pines for the day of the return of the Count. He comes and reads the Count's and his forefathers' journals in the library, gets himself half drunk on brandy, sometimes stays overnight, and then departs to carry on with the shipping line business for you. I believe that is the only thing left holding his sanity together."
Cedric concurred with Agnes, "He is truly half daft, but he certainly is a good captain. The return of the Count is never going to happen. The heir perished with the Count and Countess. Entertain him while we meet and plan the expansion of the oil drilling. Keep him from the conference room."
Agnes was indignant, "I'm John Clayton's wife. I'm no babysitter for that crazy old mariner. John may be gone but I have the legal authority as his widow, I am now Principal Executor. I belong in that room too. I could assign a servant to the task of looking out for the Captain."
Cedric's eyes narrowed, "Agnes. You keep up the pretense of being Executor. You are the pretty smile at the top of the Clayton empire. We are its dark underbelly - we will get the job done."
"But…" she resisted.
"Don't we pay you well enough for that role? You get all the benefits but don't have any of the hard decisions. Let no one disturb us until I say so."
She acquiesced, "Understood, Sir Cedric."
She stomped off, fuming, and prepared to greet the Captain. The door knocked.
Agnes exclaimed to the servants, "I'll get it, I'm expecting Captain d'Arnot."
She was flustered by meeting a cheerful young woman at the door instead.
"Uh… Good day Madam. Are you with Captain d'Arnot?"
"Who is Captain d'Arnot?" said Jane with a straight face.
"I could have sworn…ah… I'm so sorry, who may I say is calling?"
"The Countess of Greystoke," stated Jane dryly.
"That is not possible madam. She has passed on. It would be impossible to meet with her," noted Agnes with some indignation.
"No, Madam, you misunderstand me. I am not calling on her, I am her," Jane stated proudly.
"You, young woman, are not her. I knew Alice Clayton," said Agnes with a frown.
"Oh but I assure you I am the Countess of Greystoke. The next Countess of Greystoke," smirked Jane.
Agnes accused angrily, "Who are you to make that claim?"
Jonathan stepped inside the door, between the two women, and took Jane by the arm. Agnes opened her mouth to scream, as she was confronted by the twin of the elder Count Clayton, but in her fright, she could not utter a sound.
Tarzan spoke, "She can make that claim because I, Jonathan Robert Clayton the Third, the sixteenth Count of Greystoke, married this woman and made her my Countess."
Tarzan shoved his signet ring of Clan Greystoke right in front of Agnes' shocked face, she looked into the emerald-green of Tarzan's intense eyes, recognizing them as his mother's, and saw the ghost of his father's face in his. Agnes blanched, and she promptly fainted.
D'Arnot slipped in the door, took Tarzan by the arm, and whispered, "Follow me Jonathan, we must hurry. Jane, it's up to you now."
Jane ran deeper into the castle, screaming for help, and found the head butler and servants, who rushed and attended to Agnes. She explained in a feigned total panic that they met at the door, but Agnes suddenly fainted. They helped the widow to a couch. She was still unconscious. She'd hit her head on the cold stone floor pretty hard. In the panic, no one thought to ask who Jane was and what she was doing there, especially since she was helping and acted like a friend of Agnes'.
Along a hallway wooden panel, d'Arnot looked both ways, pulled open the seemingly flush wall panel and motioned Tarzan to follow him into a narrow inner wall secret passage. There they could, through innocuous peep-holes, observe the workings of the secret meeting of Executors in the main study. D'Arnot drew the men's names and locations around the table as the spoke, so Tarzan would know who the conspirators were. D'Arnot was surprised that several previously trustworthy people were actually turncoats with Cedric.
It was clear they were planning the next major shipment of more oil equipment to Nigeria, noting pending arrangements with petroleum outfitters. It would be horrendously expensive. Cedric noted they would sell much of the estate's properties and other holdings to pay off the Nigerian Council and questionable arrangements with contractors from around the world, especially with several exploitative American oil companies bent on expansion.
Tarzan whispered, "I have heard enough."
"Let's go then."
They emerged from the secret passage and Tarzan knocked on the study door. Cedric was incensed, and yelled as he cracked open the door, "I told you, Agnes, that we are not to be disturbed."
Tarzan smashed the door into Cedric's face, reeling him backwards across the table, sprawling him. Tarzan grabbed him by the neck, lifting him off the ground and snarled through tightly clenched teeth, "But I am not Agnes, and you are all trespassing on my property, Cedric. And spending money that is not yours."
"No! It cannot be!" Cedric choked the words out through Tarzan's firm grip on his throat.
The roomful of conspirators were shocked to see who they thought was Tarzan's dead father, and panicked.
They all tried to grab all their secret ledgers from the table and scatter, but there was nowhere to go. One man pulled a gun, but Tarzan threw his blade flat sided and knocked the pistol from his hand. It fired and wounded a colleague, who collapsed. Tarzan pulled his sword and was ready for any other attack. Everyone froze in place. In the hallway with Agnes, Jane flinched, praying that Tarzan was not hurt with the shot. A dozen sailors loyal to d'Arnot poured in through the study door, and subdued the traitorous men and seized their illegal records. It all happened in seconds.
D'Arnot and Tarzan smiled at each other and shook hands vigorously. It all worked flawlessly.