Touch Not The Cat by Mary Stewart

the puzzle of my father's final message.
    "Rob, does the phrase 'William's brook' mean anything to you?"
    "William's what?"
    "I think it was 'William's brook.'"
    He shook his head. "Uh-uh. Never heard of it that I can remember."
    "Could it be the Overflow?"
    "I never heard it called anything else but that, did you?"
    "No. I only asked because I'd wondered if Daddy meant you when he said, 'Perhaps the boy knows.'" I sighed a little and pushed my plate away. "That was fine. Thanks very much, Rob."
    "You're welcome." He got up and began stacking the plates. "Shall I fix your bike for you now?"
    "If you would. I'll wash up while you do it."
    "O.K." Then, easily: "Where are you putting your dad's ashes? In the enclosure?"
    He might have been saying something about the washing up. I found it oddly comforting. Family talk; as familiar as with my own cousins, and without the constraints that I had, for obvious reasons, felt there sometimes.
    "No, he didn't want that. Too much like putting fences round him, he said." The enclosure was the Ashley grave plot, where, within the iron railings, the family had lain since the Giles Ashley who had died in 1647. "He said he'd had enough of that when he was a prisoner of war; he wanted the open air. So I'll be coming back in the morning, very early, before there's anyone about."
    "I'll be about, very likely, but I'll not disturb you. If you want breakfast when you've done, I'll be frying up at about seven o'clock. You can go down to the cottage after. I'll take your things along. Suit you?"
    "Suits me."
    He disappeared whistling towards the scullery, and I began to carry the dishes over to the sink.
    Ashley, 1835
    Surely she was not often as late as this?
    The sane part of him insisted that she was. There had been nights when she had been prevented from coming at all, and he had waited all night long in this fret and torment, raw with longing, only to rant and curse at her when, the next night, braving who knew what rough perils from her family and the village see-alls, she came again.
    He spared a thought for her, hurrying to him through the windy dark, wrapped in her old cloak, the maze key clutched in her hand. "The key to heaven," she had called it, and he had not laughed at her for the phrase as he might have done, my God, yes, even a month ago. He had had to bite his lips to stop himself saying, "The key to my heart."
    That had been when he first knew for sure. She was the one. Of all of them, she was the one.

Six
    With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew. . . .
    —Romeo and Juliet, I, i
    Five o'clock in the morning. England in May. The time they always used to sing about. And well they might, I thought, buzzing along the country roads on the Lambretta with the early sun brilliant on the wet hedgerows, and the meadow grasses furred with dew as thick as hoarfrost. Heaven knew when last I had been out so early; I had forgotten the light, the sweetness of the air, the newly washed smell of everything, the fat lambs' calling, the thrushes going wild in the hawthorns. Forgotten the hawthorns themselves, frothing with maybloom along the road, with cowslips and cuckoo-flowers almost hiding the hedge bottoms. Forgotten the cuckoo, shouting in the echoing distance. Forgotten, even, the other preoccupation that went with me.
    But here he was, crowding me. Hullo, I said, but gaily, without anxiety. Shall I see you today?
    Shall I see you today?
    I wouldn't be surprised, said he, and the doors slowly closed between us like a cloud drawing over the sun.
    There was no sign of life from the Court. Curtains hung close over the windows. On the moat the swans sailed with their six grey young, and a blue heron fished busily for roach. The air was pure and very still.
    I took an hour, alone in the great neglected gardens. The swans cruised unheeding, the heron fished on. The rabbits in the orchard sat bolt upright to watch me, their fur outlined with light and their pricked ears as transparent as