Amanderellaand the Punctual Ghost Chapter 9.

Chapter 9.

 

Back at Boddals.

 

Inside Boddals, Amanderella turned to Honoria.

“The piece for my motor‑bike has not arrived, so it looks as though I will have to impose on you for at least another day.”

Honoria, who was arranging a small army of clean teacups on the dresser, did not look in the least imposed upon.

“Nonsense,” she said. “You’re no trouble. We’ve had far worse visitors stay far longer. One more day will not upset the household.”

She placed the last cup with a decisive click.

“Besides, Osric is quite taken with the idea of your motor‑bicycle. He has already suggested three possible Roman routes it might have followed to reach us.”

Amanderella smiled. “I’m not sure the Romans would have approved of the gradient.”

“Nor am I,” Honoria said. “But it keeps him occupied.”

She wiped her hands on a cloth and gave Amanderella a brief, assessing glance, the sort that checked for signs of fatigue, damp hems, or unsuitable footwear.

“If you’ve nothing pressing,” she said, “a turn about the grounds would do you good. The air is clear today, and the paddock is less muddy than usual. Osric is out there now, staring at the hedge again. You may wish to avoid him unless you want a lecture.”

Amanderella inclined her head. “A walk would be pleasant.”

“Good. Take the path behind the kitchen garden. It’s quieter. The paddock is all very well, but Osric never looks beyond it, and there’s more to the land than that.”

Honoria spoke as though the hillside were an old acquaintance who occasionally needed reminding of its manners.

Amanderella collected her gloves and stepped out into the stillness of the late morning. She followed the narrow path past the kitchen wall, where the scent of damp earth and rosemary drifted up, and let the ground lead her where it chose.

The air changed as soon as Amanderella passed the kitchen garden. The domestic sounds of Boddals House, the clink of Honoria’s teacups and the distant, rhythmic snip-snip of garden shears, faded, replaced by the low hum of the moor and the rustle of long grass.

She looked back once. Dr Osric was still there in the paddock, a stationary figure in tweed, glaring intensely at a hawthorn hedge as if trying to compel it to reveal a centurion. It was a small, safe world, bounded by a fence he did not dare cross.

Amanderella turned away and began to climb.

The ground here was different. It didn't have the soft, managed feel of the paddock. It was leaner, harder, and the grass grew in thin, wiry clumps. She reached a small plateau where the ridge took a sharp, limestone breath before dipping toward the hidden valley on the other side.

It was here that she saw it. Not a relic, nor anything that would have satisfied von Vroom, but a line, a simple, stubborn line, running across the slope. It cut through the grass at a slight angle, too straight to be natural, too deliberate to be chance. A faint terrace, no more than the width of a cart, pressed into the hillside as though the land had once been persuaded to behave differently.

Amanderella walked along it, testing the ground with the toe of her boot. The turf was thinner here, the soil packed hard beneath, as if generations of feet or hooves had passed this way long before the paddock fence had been thought of.

She crouched and brushed aside a tuft of wiry grass. Beneath it lay a scatter of small stones, not local to this part of the ridge, rounded, compacted, and set in a way that suggested they had once been laid with purpose.

Osric, from his paddock, would never have seen it. The line only revealed itself from above, where the slope opened out and the land’s older intentions could be read.

Amanderella straightened, looking along the faint trackway as it curved toward the dip behind The Boddals.

She stood a moment longer, letting the wind pass over her sleeves and the quiet settle. There was no need to hurry back or announce anything. The land had simply offered her a fact, and she had accepted it.

Behind her, faint and far below, came the soft, determined tapping of Osric’s walking stick against a stone. He was still in the paddock, still staring at the hedge, still entirely certain the Romans had chosen that particular patch of ground.

Amanderella smiled to herself and followed the old line a little further, just to see where it meant to go.

The line carried her toward the far edge of the square field, where the ground rose again in a short, sharp lift. Amanderella climbed it without hurry. The wind freshened as she reached the top, bringing with it the faint tang of oil and old iron, a smell that did not belong to the moor at all.

She stepped onto the crest.

The view opened at once.

Below her, hidden from the village and entirely out of Osric’s habitual sightline, lay the railway cutting: a long, straight slice through the hillside, its sides kept neat by the steady work of wind, rain, and the occasional maintenance crew. The rails shone faintly in the light, the way well‑used metal always did, and the line ran cleanly into the dark mouth of a tunnel driven straight under the ridge.

Amanderella followed the alignment with her eyes. The tunnel pointed back toward The Boddals with the calm certainty of Victorian engineering. Any train passing through it, especially a heavy overnight sleeper, would travel underground and behind the house, close enough for the sound to rise through soil and stone.

She stood a moment, letting the pieces settle.

Osric’s trackway.

The square field.

The punctual ghost.

The tunnel.

None of it dramatic. All of it quietly persuasive.

Far down the line, a faint vibration trembled through the rails, not enough to be a train yet, but enough to suggest one would come in due course, exactly on time.

Amanderella took one last look at the tunnel mouth, half‑shadowed and still, then turned back toward The Boddals, the wind at her back and the old line of the trackway guiding her steps.

The scent of freshly made coffee and shortbread greeted her as she reached the house. Honoria must have heard her step on the gravel, for the kitchen door opened before Amanderella had time to knock.

“You’re just in time,” Honoria said, standing aside to let her in. “Osric has been talking himself into a state about that hedge again. Coffee will steady him.”

A small tray waited on the table: two cups, a neat jug of hot milk, and a plate of shortbread fingers arranged with the kind of precision Honoria applied to everything from cutlery to crises.

Amanderella removed her gloves. “It smells excellent.”

“It is excellent,” Honoria said, with the unshakable authority of someone who had never served a disappointing cup in her life. “Sit down a moment. You look as though the wind has had opinions.”

Amanderella took a seat. The warmth of the room settled around her, a quiet contrast to the ridge and its long, patient line of history.