“How do geese learn how to fly in a V formation like that?” she asks. John Stone looks up at the flock of dark-bellied geese propelling themselves across the shimmering sky. There is a whistling sound as they beat their wings in unison. They have come to spend winter here. It has been several years since they last sought sanctuary. He is happy to see them back. He is happy to be here to see them back.
“Geese are born with the knowledge of what it is to be a goose,” he says.
“Are we?”
“I believe we know more than we think we do. It takes time to trust oneself.”
“Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see my mother in me?”
“Yes, I do. Every day.”
* * *
John Stone raises his left hand to the sky and stretches out his fingers, opening and closing them like a fan, squinting at their outline, black against the sky. There is currently no tremor.
“It’s helping, isn’t it?” Spark is looking over her shoulder at him. “Even if it’s making you tired.”
John Stone nods. “The symptoms are less severe. . . . We’ll see. Would you run ahead before Martha gets impatient? Tell her I’m on my way.”
Spark jumps up, making the decking creak, and John Stone raises his neck, straining to watch her golden head disappear out of sight.
* * *
Presently John Stone rolls out of his hammock. He walks slowly back toward the orchard, not because he feels weak, but rather because the world is beautiful. He is fiercely grateful for each new day that dawns. Reengaging with his past these last few months has stirred up the sediment of his life. Clarity has been replaced by richness. Each place connects with another, each feeling with another, each thought with another, so that, finally, everything resonates and chimes with meaning.
Yellowing, heart-shaped leaves fall around him. He seems to catch the smell of rosewater, and sees shadows tracing patterns on a slim back; he stares down at the ground from the height of his father’s horse; he hears the thunder of hooves and a voice calling for his unicorn; he feels the cool spray of fountains on his cheek. There is no end to scratching away the layers of memory.
John Stone no longer has any doubt that his daughter is sempervivens. Like Martha and Jacob, he does not need to be told. Spark believes that nowadays secrets are impossible to keep and he is beginning to agree with her. She says that if her father came of age in a hall of mirrors, she must live in a house of glass. What will she want, this astounding daughter of his, he wonders, and what she will do? They will disagree, but while he can, he will protect her. And he will tell her all he can about her mother’s life, and help her to find out more.
When he reaches the orchard he stops for a moment under a spreading damson tree, draped with clusters of deep purple fruit. Wasps drone drunkenly around the wrinkled windfalls. He remembers some of the desolate moments of the past year and it is with joy that he now observes a long table beneath the trees, garlanded with flowers and fruit, and peopled with friends and family. After so long, the boundaries of Stowney House have miraculously opened up. Edward stands at the head of the table, opening wine; Mrs. Park helps Martha arrange plates; Dan leans backward in his chair, feeding red apples to Bontemps. Jacob is nowhere to be seen though he can smell pipe tobacco. He scans the taller trees for telltale signs. Everywhere, apples, plums, pears hang from branches weighed down with fruit. Spark looks up at him and waves, giving him the loveliest smile. She pats the empty seat next to her. His long life, he knows, is now tilting toward darkness, but for now John Stone emerges into the golden sunshine and walks toward his daughter, marveling at this abundant harvest.
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to David Gale and Liz Kossnar at Simon & Schuster for their inspiring professionalism and editorial expertise; to the Royal Literary Fund for generously awarding me a fellowship 2013–2015; to Professor Anthony Grafton of Princeton University for an illuminating conversation on seventeenth-century Versailles and for his views on the predicament of John Stone; to Dr. Mark Bryant of the University of Chichester for casting an expert eye on my historical detail; to my sister novelists—Emma Darwin, Essie Fox, and Caroline Green—for their invaluable support and advice; and a special thank-you both to Susannah Cherry for her notes on a final draft, and to Margot for her advice on my protagonist’s legal affairs, for suggesting the giant tortoise, and, most importantly, for her insights into the moral world of John Stone; to all (both currently and formerly) at the wonderful A. P. Watt Ltd. at United Agents, but in particular to: Caradoc King, Mildred Yuan, Amy Elliott, Louise Lamont, Elinor Cooper, and Christine Glover; to the dramatist John Retallack for helping me put flesh on Jacob’s bones; and to Rachel Robinson for a psychologist’s take on a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old man. Finally, and above all, my thanks to R., L., and I. Archer, without whom this book could not have been written.
LINDA BUCKLEY-ARCHER is the author of the celebrated Gideon trilogy: The Time Travelers, The Time Thief, and The Time Quake. Originally trained as a linguist, she is now a full-time novelist and scriptwriter. She has written a television drama for the BBC and several radio dramas, as well as various journalistic pieces for papers like the Independent.
Simon & Schuster • New York
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ALSO BY LINDA BUCKLEY-ARCHER
THE GIDEON TRILOGY
The Time Travelers (previously titled Gideon the Cutpurse)
The Time Thief
The Time Quake
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Linda Buckley-Archer
Jacket photo-illustration by We Monsters, photograph of girl with camera copyright © 2015 by Carlos Cossio/Getty Images; other photographs copyright © 2015 by iStockphoto/Thinkstock
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Buckley-Archer, Linda.
The many lives of John Stone / Linda Buckley-Archer.—1st edition.
pages cm
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Spark takes a summer job working at a secluded house in England, organizing journals that span centuries and all written in the same hand, she discovers her true connection to the people who live there and the trait that makes them unique.
ISBN 978-1-4814-2637-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4814-2639-8 (eBook)
[1. Longevity—Fiction. 2. Summer employment—Fiction. 3. Supernatural—Fiction. 4. Identity—Fiction. 5. England—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B882338Man 2015
[Fic]—dc23
2014035641
Linda Buckley-Archer
, The Many Lives of John Stone
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