"Unless we remember, we cannot understand."
M. Forster
Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: eyeon, kukladoll89, and AlexisRose84.
Wednesday morning
The sun shone brightly down from a blue sky dotted with wisps of cloud. The brook rushed and babbled on the side of the path. The breeze ruffled the hair peeping out from beneath her hat, carrying the sweet scents of summer flowers, the lushness of roses, the piercing honey of stock. Anna felt his broad, warm hand clasped in hers as they walked together, hand in hand, heads up, with no need to hide. If anyone walked by, he would nod to them; she would smile. Everyone at Downton and in the village knew about them, knew they were a couple, but it didn't matter. They were together with no shade or shadow between them.
He'd asked her early on to call him by his first name, John, not simply Bates; she'd already asked him long before to call her Anna. But somehow, she never could. It was too intimate. But it was safe now. She whispered the name into his ear.
She leaned her head against his arm. "John, I want to be with you, always." When he hesitated, she persisted. "Can't we do that? It's safe now, isn't it?"
He turned his head to look at her, and his ruggedly handsome face was troubled. A chill struck through her, but not because of the fear that someone else would find out. No, it was for some other reason, darker, more hidden. She stumbled over a rock in the path. He caught her.
"Thank you, John," she said, because she loved the sound of his first name, and she was going to use it.
"I will never let you fall, Anna," he said. His voice was oddly grim, and she understood that there were dangers, but he was protecting her from them, no matter what.
'I trust you, John," she whispered, knowing that whatever dangers might be threatening, he would protect her from them, no matter what. She did trust him.
They stopped walking. The smooth surface of the brook swam before her eyes, the sun blurring on the waters in a way that did not seem natural. For the first time, Anna understood that it was a dream. The corners of her mouth turned down.
"Can we ever walk in the sunlight?" she whispered.
"One day, we will walk together wherever you like, Anna," he told her. He drew closer and closer to her, and she turned up her face rapidly in the sun, knowing that the dream would end all too soon, that this was her last chance for a kiss.
A shadow fell in front of her, a real one this time, blocking the light. Anna looked up to see Mr. Pamuk.
"Why did you come to me, Mr. Bates?" he asked in his low, velvety voice, just slightly grating, as if his smooth throat and lovely mouth were filled with dirt.
At the same moment, something rustled behind them. Anna's back prickled. She knew, with the kind of surety that one can only have in dreams, that the sound was made by a faceless man walking towards them.
"Such a nice little thing." The second man's bland voice eddied into her ears like a soft poison. "What a pity it would be to be obliged to put her out of the way."
"You will not touch her," Bates said fiercely, his arm tightening round her, and Anna knew that he would keep her safe at any cost to himself.
The strangest thing was that she almost recognized the whispering voice. She knew that she'd heard this man speaking during waking life, whoever he was. And it was vital to know who he was, because he threatened their happiness more than anyone else could. But who is he? She asked herself desperately. If I could only remember! Somewhere in the distance, the village clock in the church began to whirr, preparing to strike, and then tolled eleven bells…
A knock at the door startled Anna out of sleep. She jumped slightly, and then yawned and stretched, the dream shredding away from her like dark mist evaporating in sunlight. The small ticking clock on the side table read seven-thirty; it seemed like a scandalously late hour, and she felt sinfully well rested. Just once, I'd like to wake up natural, she had once told Gwen when Daisy's sharp rap came at the door at six in the morning. This was just as good.
"Did you sleep well?" Mary asked as Anna began to put her hair up into a chignon a few minutes later.
"Wonderfully well, m'lady." Anna shaped the long-dark hair into neat shining coils, securing each with a pin.
"I hope you don't mind staying there, just for a bit."
"No, not at all," Anna said, quite truthfully.
Mary stared into the mirror. "Do I look dreadful?"
"Of course not." Anna straightened the white lace collar on Mary's shirtwaist.
Their eyes met in the glass. Anna understood that her mistress wanted to ask much more. She herself could almost hear the questions. What happened last night? Did I have another nightmare? What did I say, what did I do? And was he here, Mr. Pamuk, hovering somewhere between the land of the living and the dead?
Then Mary turned away, and sighed, and the moment was over.
Anna hurried into her seat at breakfast a few minutes late. She was uncomfortably sure that O'Brien's eyes rested on her longer than they should have done, but the best thing would undoubtedly be to ignore it, which she did. As she ate, she exchanged a couple of glances with Mr. Bates. As the bells began to ring at the end of the meal, when everyone's attention was elsewhere, he jerked his head towards a small nook in the corridor behind the servant's hall. She slipped away as quietly as she could.
"Meet me in the boot room around four o'clock," he said out of one side of his mouth. "I'll have William there. Together, I think we can get the story of that dinner with Pamuk out of him, although we'll need to be careful."
"Right," Anna whispered back. "We've got to find out more." She thought about confessing to him that she'd been thick enough to tell Mary that she would know the truth within two days. I know it was mad, Mr. Bates, but I couldn't help it. You ought to have seen Lady Mary; I thought she'd lose her reason if I couldn't tell her something, anything… and the promise just slipped out... oh, no, I can't tell him that, what a fool I'd sound if I did.
He looked at her intently. "Anna, we will find out what you need to know."
It was as if he had read her mind. She suddenly became aware of how close the two of them were standing, and how solid his presence was, how comforting, how just being near him seemed to calm her mind and set her racing thoughts in order. And yet how disturbing it was, too, standing so close to him.
Light footsteps approached the niche, and Anna sprang apart from Bates, hoping that her guilt didn't show through on her face. Not that there was anything to be guilty about, she told herself. They'd been doing nothing wrong, simply talking, which was hardly against the law. But if O'Brien were the one coming towards them, then that was more than enough reason to be wary.
The footsteps didn't belong to the lady's maid, Anna realized almost at once. They were light but firm, not sneaky or stealthy, as O'Brien's too often were. Gwen's stopped in front of the niche, the faint light in the corridor reflecting off the shiny red hair peeping from beneath her cap.
"Anna?" she asked uncertainly.
"Yes?" Anna didn't like the almost squeaky sound of her own voice, but she kept her face neutral. A shadow slipped away; she could barely see Bates headed in the other direction out of the corner of her eye. How silently he moves, she though.
"Where were you last night?" asked Gwen without preamble, her voice quiet. "I was awfully worried. Did you come to bed at all?"
Anna flushed slightly. "I… I slept in Lady Mary's room." She wondered if she should explain anything about why. But she couldn't, of course; Mary didn't want anyone to know about the nightmares.
Gwen seemed to search her face for a moment before dropping her gaze. "Oh," was all she said.
Anna felt a twinge of guilt. She understood the hypocrisy all too well. She had found out Gwen's secret about the typewriter and the secretary courses; now she wouldn't tell the other woman her own. But then, too, that meant that Gwen would understand.
"I'm terribly sorry, Gwennie," said Anna in a low voice. "But I really can't explain. Do you think anybody else has figured it out?"
"I don't think so. If you don't want me to tell anyone…"
Anna shook her head. "Please, don't."
"Of course I won't," Gwen whispered back.
They walked out together, which Anna regretted as soon as she saw O'Brien moving to the foot of the stairs. She had no idea where the woman had come from, and she stifled a groan. It wasn't the first time she'd seen the lady's maid dartly swiftly to an innocent location after a spying session. She could only hope that the other woman hadn't been close enough earlier to hear anything of their conversation. God, I hope not! For that matter, if O'Brien had in fact been watching her, had she seen Bates leave as Gwen arrived? Had she been lurking about when Anna and Bates were talking? God only knows what sort of mischief that nasty creature is up to now, thought Anna. This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid might happen. But there's nothing to be done about it now. She pasted a pleasant smile on her face and started up the stairs, praying that the day would pass quickly.
Wednesday 4:00
Anna hoped the hammering of her heart in her chest wasn't audible. It was all working out according to plan—so far, at least. Bates had strolled into the boot room with William, advising him on the best way to remove spilled ink from leather uppers. Anna had knocked on the door a minute later with the excuse of needing to talk to Bates about the most effective method of polishing a pair of Lady Mary's shoes. They had both drawn the younger footman into the conversation, moving so that they stood between William and the door, still smiling and talking. I've got to stay calm, she reminded herself. I can't let William know how nervous I am, or he'll never open his mouth about this. Thank God for John! In her own silent thoughts, at least, she would continue to call him by his Christian name.
"You ought to be a valet someday, William," Bates was saying pleasantly. "You'd be a good one, in time."
"D'you really think so, Mr. Bates?" William asked earnestly, working on the boot with a cloth.
"Oh, yes." He flicked a glance sideways at Anna. "You could do more than just waiting at dinner."
"Although you're very good at that too," said Anna enthusiastically, hoping that she didn't sound like a perfect fool. "I wish I could, but we'll see the four horsemen of the Apocalypse before Mr. Carson ever allows maids to wait table."
"D'you really think so, Anna?" William asked.
"Of course I do," she said.
William beamed at her, and she felt a twinge of guilt. The young footman clearly would have loved to walk out with her, given the slightest bit of encouragement. Not a chance, William, never in a million years, she thought. But she had to find out what had really happened on that night when Mr. Pamuk had sat at the Crawley table, and this was the only hope of doing it.
"I wish I could have seen how dinner went on that night with Mr. Pamuk," she went on. "It must have been fascinating."
"Oh, it was dead interesting, all right," said William. Then he quickly blushed at his unfortunate choice of words. "I mean, uh… I didn't mean to say…"
"That's all right, William, " said Bates, sounding more genial than ever. "I'm sure it was. I'd like to hear about it as well. Why don't you tell us how it was? I know you've got a good memory." Anna nodded vigorously in agreement.
William puffed a bit. "Well, if you'd really like to know."
Anna gave him her best smile. "I'd love to hear all about it. And don't leave out any details."
"All right, then," said William. "If you really want to know. It was a usual dinner, like. Nothing different about it. At least, not up to the point where they all started to argue. And then…" He put down the boot, and a far-away look entered his eyes, and he began to describe what had happened that night.
Anna already knew that William would never set the world on fire with his cleverness. However, he had not only an excellent memory, but an extraordinary eye for detail and description. She had an odd feeling that she could actually see the scene, that his words painted a picture for her, and almost at once, she fell into the scene he described.
The aroma of roasted meats and flaky pastries and creamy soup drifted across the room. The china clinked and the silver gleamed as knives cut joints of beef and forks speared bites of asparagus. Crystal glittered as hands lifted glasses in the candlelight, and a voice cut across the scene.
"I don't understand," Lady Violet said to the table at large. "Why would she want to be a secretary?"
"She wants a different life," Matthew answered her from across the table as Carson moved towards him, carafe in hand.
"But why?" asked Lady Violet, sounding incredulous. " I should far prefer to be a maid in a large and pleasant house, than work from dawn 'til dusk in a cramped and gloomy office." She turned to the butler. "Don't you agree, Carson?"
Mary and Mr. Pamuk exchanged a brief look, suppressed smiles seeming to linger on both their faces.
"I do, m'lady," Carson said emphatically.
"Why are we talking about this?" asked Mary with a light laugh, picking up her glass and turning to her right, towards Mr. Pamuk. "What does it matter?"
"It matters whether the people who live and work here are content," said Cora in rather reproving tones.
"Of course," said Sybil. "We should be helping Gwen if that's what she wants."
"I agree," put in Isobel Crawley from the other side of the table. "Surely we must all encourage those less fortunate to improve their lot where they can."
"Not if it isn't in their best interests," said Lady Violet, taking a sip of her Chardonnay.
Isobel's voice took on an edge. "Isn't the maid a better judge of that than we?"
"What do you say, Mr Pamuk?" asked Mary, her tone still light. "Should our housemaid be kept enslaved or forced out into the world?"
He smiled and looked about the table. "Why are you English so curious about each other's lives? If she wishes to leave and the law permits it, then let her go."
Mary and Mr. Pamuk exchanged another glance, as if sharing a private secret. Evelyn Napier, to one side, very clearly caught the look and was far from happy to do so.
"Perhaps the law should not permit it, for the common good," said Lady Violet, beginning to cut the entrée.
"So you hanker for the days of serfdom?" asked Isobel, the edge more pronounced than ever.
Lady Violet turned her head. "I hanker for a simpler world. Is that a crime?"
Mr. Pamuk shrugged. "I too dream of a simpler world. As long as we can keep our trains and our dentistry." He laughed towards Mary on his left, and she leaned in towards him. The scene faded out as William moved across the room at a gesture from Carson.
"He said something to her that I couldn't quite hear," said William, bringing them back to the present in the sunny boot room for the moment. "But it sounded like mebbe it weren't nice," he added piously. "Mr. Napier didn't look none too happy neither."
"Was there anything more?" asked Bates.
"Oh, yes. Once I crossed back to the other side of the room, I heard it all." William picked up the thread of the story, and once again, Anna was immersed back in the dinner party of two nights earlier.
"Lady Mary rode very well today," said Evelyn Napier, sounding a bit awkward and hesitant.
"Why did you send Lynch back?" Robert asked, raising his voice slightly to be heard.
"I had my champions to left and right. It was enough." Mary toyed with the garnet necklace at her throat. Again, it could not have been more obvious that the smile she bestowed was for Kemal Pamuk, not Evelyn Napier. Matthew Crawley looked at her, a troubled expression flashing briefly across his face.
"Did you enjoy the hunt, Mr. Napier?" asked Robert. "Mary tells me you had a tremendous run."
"It was like something out of a Trollope novel," said Napier. But his discomfort at what he was witnessing was clear on his face.
"What about you, Mr. Pamuk. Was the day a success?" asked Cora.
"Oh yes, Lady Grantham. I can hardly remember a better one," said Pamuk. He shared a look with Mary. Again, Matthew flicked a glance at them both, and then he stuck a fork in his mouth with a grim expression. There was a moment of discomfort at the table, subtle but impossible to miss.
Edith cleared her throat. "Mary, what were you talking about a moment ago?"
"I beg your pardon?" Mary asked her sister, her voice frosty.
"With Mr. Pamuk," Edith persisted. "You were having quite a tete a tete. It must have been fascinating."
"It was entirely my fault," Pamuk said smoothly. "I should not have monopolized Lady Mary in that fashion."
"But what were you talking about?"
"Herbal remedies in Turkey," replied Pamuk. "They are quite widely used. Whenever I had toothache, my grandmother dosed me with her own tincture of herbs."
Carson flicked his eyes at William in a well-understood signal. The footman headed for the pantry to bring out the next course.
"And that was the end of it," William concluded.
Anna blinked. She had been pulled into the dinner party so completely by his descriptions that it was hard to come back to the reality of the afternoon two days later, but she knew that she must.
"Herbs in Turkey, that's how it ended?" she asked. She had a hard time believing that this could have any importance, but they couldn't afford to pass anything up. "Do you remember which ones?"
William shook his head sadly. "I went to pick up the serving dishes then, and I didn't hear it all. Oh, yes, there was one thing more, and I heard bits of it. Mr. Pamuk said something about his old grandpa dying. Sounded like he set some store by the old gentleman, all right. Something about his heart, and how his grandma's remedies set him up proper for years past his time, but even the best herbs could only do so much. He talked just a bit more about the old ways in Turkey, in… Istanbul, that's it."
Bates's brow furrowed. "Are you sure that was the name Mr. Pamuk used?"
"Oh, yes." William nodded vigorously. "The name was so queer, I remembered it, right enough. What's it mean?"
"It's a city in Turkey," said Bates. "So you say he talked about old ways, things in the past?"
"He did that, all right, and he didn't think much of them. S'pose it makes sense that he wouldn't be one who'd care for the old days, being so young and all," said William.
"Hmm. Was there anything else?" asked Bates
"Just a few more words I overheard at the end of the dinner. It didn't catch my attention, like. Not half so much. Oh, but I remember… someone talked about something called the 'Young Turks.'. Mebbe poor Mr. Pamuk did that. Dunno what those are, and nobody explained."
"And that's all?" Anna prodded him. "You're sure?"
He nodded.
She drummed her fingers on the table where she knew William would not see. "What happened then?"
"What always happens after dinner," shrugged William. "Nowt—I mean, nothing special." He flushed slightly. Anna knew that he had been working on his speech, trying to get rid of his Yorkshire accent. "I was hall boy that night… oh, I remember something a bit odd. I saw someone in the guest room corridor at midnight, but not clearly,"
At her side, Anna felt Mr. Bates stiffen minutely.
"I saw him at the end of the corridor, from behind, like. Big man with short dark hair. I dunno who he was. Why, he might have even been you, Mr. Bates."
"Indeed, but it wasn't," said Bates. "So you didn't recognize him?"
"He weren't—wasn't one of us," said William.
"He might have been Mr. Napier's valet," Anna pointed out, remembering the guest's valet. His build, height, and hair color had in fact been very similar to Mr. Bates.
"S'pose so,," said William, frowning slightly. "Wonder what he was doing up there so late… all the gentlemen already went to bed."
"Impossible to say," said Bates. "No business of ours, at any rate."
William's cheeks turned pink again.
"At any rate, we've kept you from those boots long enough," Bates said smoothly.
"Reckon so, Mr. Bates," said William, and with a nod, he turned back to the mud-spattered hunting boots laid out on the wooden table.
At a nudge from Mr. Bates's hand, Anna knew that she ought to leave with him. Together, they walked out of the boot room and into the corridor. When she stole a sideways look at him, his features were expressionless.
"Do you have a few more minutes, Anna?" he asked in a voice so low she could hardly hear it.
"Yes, I think I've got a bit more time before I'm likely to be called upstairs for anything," she replied just as quietly.
He pulled her into the same nook in the corridor where they'd spoken that morning, and she felt the warmth of his body in the small space. Her heart began pounding again. Oh, I hope he can't hear it!
"Good," he said. "Meet me outside. We've got to talk about this."
She nodded, After he slipped out, she took a second to compose herself, and then she followed him, her mind whirling with everything that William had just said. The dinner, the scene she could picture all too well. Who would ever have guessed that William was such a marvelous hand at making a story come to life? She'd pictured the dinner scene as vividly as if she'd been there— Mr. Pamuk's suave words, Lady Mary's tinkling laughter, Mr. Napier's nervous looks, and Matthew Crawley… she could picture him, too, and she went beyond what William had actually described. In her mind, he stole glances at Mary whenever he thought he wouldn't be caught, his gaze shifting from her gleaming black hair to the garnets sparkling at her creamy throat to the winged brows above her dark eyes.
He notices Lady Mary, all right, thought Anna. He feels something for her. He wants to know more of her. She wasn't sure how much of this sudden conviction came directly from William's story, and how much of it was from everything that she herself had seen and heard since Matthew Crawley had arrived at Downton as the new heir. But she was sure of it now.
Matthew Crawley deserves better than I can give him, Mary had said in her nightmare as Anna held her tightly and tried to still her trembling hands. He needs a girl who is pure, untouched, unsullied. I shall never be pure again.
Anna shook her head. Whatever attraction might or might not exist between those two, and however slim the chance might be that it could possibly lead to anything, she couldn't think about it now. She needed to figure out how William's information could possibly lead to any sort of solution to the desperate question of what exactly had happened to Mr. Pamuk, and she wasn't sure how to even begin the project. I don't see how any of it makes sense, she admitted to herself. But when I talk with John, it'll all come clear, I have no doubt.
John...
She really needed to stop calling him by his first name in her thoughts, when it was something that she could not imagine ever being able to do in waking life. Anna sighed and carefully went out the door that led to the little yard in back, knowing that Mr. Bates was waiting for her.
A/N: No, you're not imagining this. Yes, it's here. This year has been... interesting. Which is why it took so long to get this up. But after this, the next chapters should go faster. :)
The suspense! What will happen next? What do you think Anna and Mr. Bates are going to discuss? And that mysterious figure in the hallway at midnight... was he really Mr. Napier's valet, and what was he doing there? These questions and many more will be answered in Chapter 17... ;)