Chapter Six: Avalon's Lost Children
Gavin spoke clearly, though his voice carried a strange quality that Ned couldn't quite identify. "The story begins with three childhood friends. The eldest, Danielle, was the leader. She was spirited, adventurous, and had a sharp mind matched only by her tongue." Ned couldn't help glancing over at Marguerite, but as Gavin's voice dropped slightly in volume, the explorers gathered closer to the bed. "Her younger sister--my mother Vivian--was Danielle's polar opposite; quiet and gentle, her utter lack of a temper compensated for her sister's fiery one. Oddly enough, they were devoted to each other. Aunt Danielle was always watchful for Mother, who tended to bring stray animals home to doctor, regardless of how dangerous they were. Mother, for her part, was the only one who could calm Danielle's temper. Their distant cousin Abigail was between them both in age and temperament, and the three spent their childhood roaming about the woods around their home together."
"A week after my mother's eighteenth birthday, the trio left for London. Danielle had been dying to leave their backwoods home for the city for ages and their parents agreed on the condition that Abigail accompany them as well. Persuading Abigail was nearly as much a trial as persuading their parents, as she had no desire to leave her home. Eventually, Abigail succumbed to Danielle's enthusiasm and agreed to go.
"They hadn't intended it when they left, but five years later all three had married in London. Abigail and her husband returned to her childhood home after a small wedding, but the London papers had a field day with the wedding of Lord Henry Montclair to Danielle Avilion. A few years later my parents were married. My father, James Conway, had been a good friend of Lord Montclair for years. After the wedding, the three couples parted company.
"They weren't apart for long, though. My parents, Abigail, and her husband returned to England in time for the birth of the Montclairs' first child--a beautiful baby girl. Henry and Danielle adored their little daughter, and between her parents, aunts, uncles, and paternal grandmother, the baby wasn't put down for a week. Danielle's beautiful voice could be heard every night, singing her daughter an ancient lullaby of her home. And although he was often busy with the estate, Henry always found time to play with the baby.
"And they were very happy, for a time. Abigail and her husband decided to remain in England for a few years. They all got together at least once a month, even if just to talk over tea. Then, one summer, it all ended.
"Abigail had returned home to visit her mother while my parents went to Java on vacation, both returning in the early fall. But disaster had struck while they were away." Gavin paused for a moment, his face pained.
Elaine quietly picked up the tale. "The Montclairs had been murdered while they were away. Lady Marie Montclair, Henry's mother, was the only one left. Henry and Danielle's bodies had been found near the river and their young daughter was missing. The police were useless. They could find no leads, and three months later they closed the case.
"Lady Marie was beside herself. Strangely, though, she refused to believe that her granddaughter was dead, though both the police and Scotland Yard could find no sign of the child. It was as if the girl had vanished into thin air. Mother didn't know what to do. She refused to believe that the child had died, but didn't know where to turn. It was Father who began the search that would consume the rest of their lives, and those of their children." It was Elaine's turn to pause, unable to continue. Gavin took her hand gently, and Ned pitied them. It was obviously a tale that pained them greatly, and though he wasn't as good as Marguerite at discerning lies, the story rang true. Ned glanced around the room, surprised that none of the more argumentative and impatient explorers had said a single word yet. Challenger was dispassionately intrigued and Roxton polite, but the ladies' reactions surprised him. Veronica was compassionate, of course, but he hadn't expected her to be so deeply effected by the tale. But Marguerite's face was very pale, and her eyes never left Elaine's face.
"They deserve the truth, remember?" Gavin reminded his sister softly, forcing Ned's attention back to the bedside. "Father decided that they should look for the missing Montclair heir themselves," he continued. "So, for the next four years, they searched the width and breadth of England for the girl. Abigail was as devastated as Mother and she and her husband helped as much as they could. But as the days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, and the months to years, they began to lose hope.
"For a long time Abigail's husband had hoped to mount a scientific expedition to their home, and he'd finally gotten the funding to do so. So in the spring of the next year, the two of them returned home with an expedition. Our parents remained in England, continuing the search and stopping at the Montclair manor frequently to check on Lady Marie.
"But when Mother received news that Abigail was pregnant, she and Father left to attend. In due time, Abigail gave birth to a baby daughter, and the child's laughter seemed to ease some of the grief. Two years later, they returned to visit Abigail again, but this time, it was Mother who was pregnant, and it was then that I was born.
"We stayed with Abigail and her family for a few months before leaving for England again. I was to be the start of a new life for them, a life free of ghosts. Lady Marie was like another grandmother to me, and my parents hoped for a bright future. But shortly after my fourth birthday the Montclairs' solicitor Paul Garner called.
"He'd been clearing out the old accounts and when he'd discovered that a special trust fund of Henry's had been depleted recently. Surprisingly, the money had been used to pay for a private girls' boarding school in Avebury. Apparently Garner had established the fund on a whim of Henry's years ago, though at the time he had wondered about his employer's sanity.
"You see, Danielle had explained to Henry, as my mother had to my father, that our family had a few…hereditary enemies. Henry knew the dangers he faced in marrying Danielle and was willing to risk his own safety, but not his daughter's. So he devised an elaborate scheme to ensure her safety. It was pure genius. The girl would receive the finest education while retaining utter anonymity until she reached her majority. Henry had set up accounts with sixteen of the world's most trusted banks and law firms, each holding three letters. Every month he wrote to Garner to prevent him from sending the first three out. The letters were sent a month after Henry's death by Garner's secretary--to a convent school in Avebury, to another in London, and to a law firm in Austria.
"All Garner knew at the time was that the fund had been depleted. He'd wanted to close the other accounts but it was impossible. Henry had created the entire system himself, and only he could locate all the banks and close the accounts, as they were in his daughter's name.
"My parents went to Avebury to investigate the school. Apparently a young girl had been dropped on the convent steps, but a respectable firm had paid for her care. The nuns hadn't questioned the case, since many families chose to send their children to boarding schools. Only this child had no visitors, no letters, and no name. They had assumed that the child was an orphan with an unknown benefactor. The child had been moved to a London boarding school five years ago when another letter arrived from a different firm. They had packed the child up and sent her away without a second thought. A young sister who had cared for the child was able to help my parents a bit more.
"The sister told the story of a young girl, bright, beautiful, and utterly alone. A dark-haired child with eyes of the most unusual color--somewhere between blue, green, and silver. Witches' eyes, the Mother Superior had once remarked. Unfortunately one of the more vicious of the students had overheard the comment, and the young girl was forever ostracized by her classmates.
"My parents were stunned. It was a near-perfect description of the Montclairs' missing heir, with one slight exception. None of the sisters could remember seeing the talisman that Henry and Danielle had given their daughter on her second birthday. Mother and Father didn't know what to think. They had no way of verifying the child's identity, nor did they want to trace a girl around the world only to disabuse false hopes.
"So they searched around Avebury, trying to find who had abandoned the girl there all those years ago. Six months of searching led them to the door of Mark Landon. It seems that Landon's aging father Michael had kept a small orphaned girl with him for a few years. When Michael died, Mark had taken the girl to the convent, leaving her on the steps with a note that Michael had saved. Reading Michael's diary proved what my parents had only begun to hope--that Henry and Danielle's daughter had miraculously survived the attack that killed her parents and had entered the protection system that her father had devised for her.
"For the next four years my parents chased the girl from school to school, country to country. They had just traced her back to yet another London boarding school when there were some complications. The assassins had struck again, this time at Abigail's family. Her mother and husband were dead within six months of each other. My parents left me with Lady Marie while they helped Abigail rebuild." He paused for a moment. "And when they returned my mother had a problem of her own," Gavin said, his voice lightening as he grinned at Elaine cheekily.
She swatted playfully at his head, resolutely ignoring the devastated expressions of the explorers. Ned quickly encompassed the scene in the room, then did as Elaine and Gavin were doing and focused on the story. Even he realized the emotional toll the tale was taking on the two, and wondered why they felt it necessary to divulge their life stories. But the tale was far too interesting to interrupt, and so fantastic that he was reminded of his childhood adventure novels. "What my brother means to say is that my mother was about to give birth--to me. My father tried to get her to a London hospital, but they couldn't make it in time. I was born in Avebury." Elaine didn't look at anyone except her brother, as if they were telling the story to each other.
Gavin took over for her again. "Unfortunately, new my sister was a rather scrawny little thing and we were forced to stay in the hospital for a few months. By the time Mother and Elaine were cleared to leave, our cousin had left the country. The girls at the school guessed she had run away to Paris.
"My parents and Lady Marie were devastated. Even so, we spent the next five years in Paris, Monte Carlo, and Austria following the gossip columns before finally traveling to Shanghai. Mother hadn't told Father about a second objective there. She believed a man called Xan held the second half of some mythological artifact that would help find her niece. Mother knew where the second half was located and planned to get Xan's half.
"But the plan went horribly awry. My mother was killed in Shanghai and we were forced to flee the country. I was thirteen; Elaine was five. Father was never the same after her death," he said softly, looking at Elaine alone. The girl's eyes were the same startling blue as when they had first found her, and it was she who turned to Marguerite to continue the story.
"The Great War began a few months after we returned to England. Father volunteered to fight and…died in France about six months later. We…we never did find out if…" Elaine's voice broke for the first time. Ned watched, astonished, as Marguerite took Elaine's hand and gave the girl a gentle hug. Elaine took a deep breath and swallowed her tears, looking up at Marguerite with a mix of such powerful emotions Ned couldn't identify the half of them. He couldn't see or imagine Marguerite's expression.
Suddenly compelled to finish the story, Elaine continued more quickly. "Lady Marie was kind enough to take us in, but in the eyes of the law our guardian still hadn't given her custody. Although most folk were content to leave us with Lady Marie, one inspector was annoyingly persistent. And was Mr. Harrison who introduced us to the one person who could help find out cousin, my legal guardian.
"Lady Marie didn't want us to leave, but it was our duty to her, and to our parents' last wish. It was 1916 when we met the government man who would lead us here. Apparently our cousin had been involved in some illicit activities. In exchange for his help in ensuring her freedom, he desired some information, information that we were to acquire by any means necessary. We went through France, Belgium, Austria, Germany, even Russia to achieve our missions. It wasn't until later that we discovered why the government would be so interested in sending two children on intelligence missions, even if I was…gifted.
"When the war ended, we were handed a file and given a place--Cairo, Egypt. After three months in the Middle East, we lost her trail in the middle of a jihad. Disheartened, we returned to England. And it was there, nearly a year later, that we heard of the Challenger Expedition," Elaine told the astonished explorers.
Marguerite made a small sound in the silence of the room but was unable to voice her question, so Roxton did it for her. "The girl--what was the name of the girl?"
Gavin looked over at the dark-haired woman sitting beside his sister. "Although children are normally named for their deceased relatives, my mother insisted upon naming my sister for her cousin. She said it was a 'gesture of hope' and she knew that someday, we'd all be together again."
"Her name was Elaine?" Ned heard himself ask incredulously. Now he was really confused. It was as if the entire room had been waiting for an answer, and that certainly wasn't the right one.
"No," Elaine said quietly. "My full name is Elaine Marguerite Conway. I was named for my cousin, the Lady Marguerite Marie Montclair."
