House Of Shadows: Discover the thrilling untold story of the Winter Queen
House Of Shadows: Discover the thrilling untold story of the Winter Queen
Nicola Cornick
For fans of Barbara Erskine and Kate Morton comes an unforgettable novel about three women and the power one lie can have over history.London, 1662:There was something the Winter Queen needed to tell him. She fought for the strength to speak.‘The crystal mirror is a danger. It must be destroyed – ‘He replied instantly. ‘It will’.Ashdown, Oxfordshire, present day: Ben Ansell is researching his family tree when he disappears. As his sister Holly begins a desperate search, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to an ornate antique mirror and to the diary of Lavinia, a 19th century courtesan who was living at Ashdown House when it burned to the ground over 200 years ago.Intrigued, and determined to find out more about the tragedy at Ashdown, Holly’s only hope is that uncovering the truth about the past will lead her to Ben.‘Fans of Kate Morton will enjoy this gripping tale.‘– Candis
NICOLA CORNICK is a historian and author. She studied at London University and Ruskin College Oxford and works for the National Trust as a guide at the seventeenth century hunting lodge Ashdown House in Oxfordshire. Her award-winning books are international bestsellers and have been translated into 26 languages.
ISBN: 978-1-474-03808-9
HOUSE OF SHADOWS
© 2015 Nicola Cornick
Published in Great Britain 2015
by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
Version: 2018-06-29
To Andrew, who has lived with my obsession with Ashdown House and William Craven for many years.
All my love as always.
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time.
Rabindranath Tagore
Acknowledgements (#ulink_88c16fea-7f37-5756-8f21-4d933bed68f2)
All my thanks go to my wonderful editor Sally Williamson who had faith in me to write this book and who gave me endless encouragement and support. I’m also hugely grateful to all my writing friends, especially the Word Wenches and the lovely Sarah Morgan for giving me the confidence finally to write the book of my heart.
I am very fortunate to work as part of a great team of volunteers at Ashdown House. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and for being so much fun to work with. Special thanks go to Maureen Dawson and to Richard Henderson at the National Trust.
I’d also like to thank Denny Andrews for showing me the site of Coleshill House and Neil Fraser for being so generous in sharing his archive on the Ashdown Estate.
I would like to pay tribute to the late Keith Blaxhall, for many years the Estate Manager at Ashdown Park. His enthusiasm and encouragement was inspiring to me and it was a great privilege to have known him.
Finally a big thank you to Julie Carr for allowing me to ‘borrow’ her lovely dog Bonnie for this story, and to Bonnie herself for graciously agreeing to star in House of Shadows.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u06e74c17-b31d-53d7-83e2-fb4d7f7789ec)
About the Author (#u110cb157-68ae-5957-b362-f599102432ce)
Title Page (#ubb91d28a-868e-5aee-a4ed-e6a0f8e500bd)
Copyright (#uc8f36ce3-31f5-5ca5-b588-399e118e1cdb)
Dedication (#u18018a90-63d4-5324-9554-7b5b2d35c8e6)
Epigraph (#u8eb7ac93-b553-5782-89f1-2c8cf6d7207d)
Acknowledgements (#uc60519fa-22ad-5390-9f9c-6dc941e1f984)
Prologue (#ufff634ef-c8b1-542f-993f-854dc54388a8)
Chapter 1 (#u4ca2de71-007e-5322-8327-0382baeac7d4)
Chapter 2 (#ub68a13c6-f95b-57ba-9a40-09600be8c0ea)
Chapter 3 (#ua0944154-93a7-547e-a64b-e9269b0b4cea)
Chapter 4 (#u53fc19dd-da95-5a55-be1f-aae95af4cff2)
Chapter 5 (#u950e416c-aae0-5bf9-95ed-3c4d3edf11e8)
Chapter 6 (#u5efdd78d-9d5c-5d23-afa6-dd7294d2c7fe)
Chapter 7 (#ua87795c5-f9a2-5f67-acd1-3bace4494427)
Chapter 8 (#u03109c46-e0d3-5d8d-9aca-f4f500881430)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract from The Woman in the Lake (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_73408c36-cc75-5f48-b905-26d1455bbcb5)
London, February 1662
She dreamed about the house on the night before she died. In the dream she felt as insignificant as a child; a miniature queen clad in a cream silk gown embroidered with gold. The collar prickled the nape of her neck as she craned her head to gaze up, up at the dazzling white stone of the house against the blue of the sky. It made her dizzy. Her head spun and the golden ball that adorned the roof seemed to plunge like a shooting star falling to earth.
Beyond the walls of her bedchamber crouched the city; filthy, noisy and seething with life. But in her dreams she was far from London; she had followed the wide ribbon of the Thames upriver, past the hunting ground at Richmond, and the great grey walls of Windsor, to a place where two rivers met. She took the narrower path through drowsy meadows thick with daisies and the hum of bees, for in her dream she was a summer princess, not a winter queen. The river became a chalk stream that bubbled up from springs deep in the dappled woods until finally she burst out of the shade and onto the highlands, and there was the house in a hollow of the hills, a little white palace fit for a queen.
Her lips moved. One of her women, weary, anxious, attentive, bent to catch the whisper. It could not be long now.
‘William.’
It caused consternation. She had sent him away, her cavalier, told her servants to bar the door against him.
‘Madam …’ The woman was uncertain. ‘I don’t think—’
The queen’s eyelashes flickered. Her eyes, blue-grey, were clear, imperious.
‘At once.’
‘Majesty.’ The woman curtsied, ran.
The room was hot, windows and doors closed, fire roaring. She drifted between sleep and waking, on the fringes of shadow. Outside, dawn was breaking over the river, the water rippling with a silver wake. It was unseasonably mild for February and the air felt heavy, waiting.
He came.
She heard the stir, felt the cool shift of the air before the door closed again, sealing them in.
‘Leave us.’
No one argued, which was good because she was too tired for arguments now. Her eyes would not open. In the silence she could hear everything though; the hiss of the fire as a log settled deeper in the grate, the creak of the floorboards beneath his boots as he crossed the room to her side.
‘Sit. Please.’ It was an effort to speak. There was no time for discussion now, or apologies, even if she had wished to make them, which she did not.
He sat. Now that he was close she could smell on him the night cold and the scent of the city. She could not see him but she did not need to. She knew every plane of his face, each line, each curve. It was as though they were written on her heart, an indelible picture.
There was something she needed to tell him. She fought for the strength to speak.
‘The crystal mirror—’
‘I will get it back. I swear it,’ he replied instantly. A second later his hand grasped hers, warm and reassuring but still she shook her head. She knew it was too late.
‘It will elude you,’ she said.
He had never understood the power of the Order of the Rosy Cross or its instruments, though perhaps he did now, now that the damage was done.
‘Danger to you—’ She tried one last time to warn him. ‘Take care or it will destroy you and your kin as it did me and mine.’ She was gasping for breath, frightened.
His fingers tightened on hers. ‘I understand. Believe me.’
She felt the knot inside her ease. She had to trust him. There was no alternative. Her life was unravelling like a skein of wool. Soon the thread would run out.
‘I want you to take this. Keep it safe, hidden.’ With an effort she opened her eyes and unclenched the fingers of her right hand. A huge pearl spilled into her lap, glowing with baleful fire in the subdued light. Even now, looking on it for the last time, she could not like it, for all its ethereal beauty. It was too powerful. It was not the fault of the jewel, of course, but of the men who had sought to use it for their own wicked purposes. Both mirror and pearl had once been a force for good, strong and protective, until their power had been corrupted through the greed of men. The Knights had been warned not to misuse the instruments of the Order and they had disobeyed. They had unleashed destruction through fire and water, just as the prophecy had foretold.
She heard the catch of Craven’s breath. ‘The Sistrin pearl should be given to your heir.’
‘Not yet.’ She was so very tired now but this last task must be completed. ‘You need to break the link between the pearl and the mirror. One day the mirror will return and then it must be destroyed. Keep the pearl safe until that is done.’
Craven did not refuse her gift or tell her that he had no time for superstition. Once he had scorned her beliefs. No longer. She watched him scoop up the pearl on its heavy gold chain and stow it within his shirt. His face was grave and set, as though he were facing battle, such was the weight of her commission.
‘Thank you.’ Her smile was weary. Her eyes closed. ‘I can sleep now.’
There was a sudden commotion. The door swung back with a crash and a protesting creak of hinges. Voices; loud, commanding. Footsteps, equally loud: her son Rupert, come to be with her at the end, always hasty, always late.
There was so little time now.
She opened her eyes again. The room swam with shadows and the red and gold of firelight but she felt cold. She looked on Craven for the last time. Grief was etched deep into his face.
‘Old,’ she thought. ‘We have had our time.’ The loss cut her like a knife. If only …
‘William,’ she said. ‘I am sorry. I wish we had another chance.’
His face lightened. He gave her the smile that had shaken her heart from the moment she had first seen him.
‘Perhaps we shall,’ he said, ‘in another life.’
She forgot that her time could be measured in breaths now, not hours or even minutes, and tightened her grip urgently on his hand.
‘The Knights of the Rosy Cross believed in the rebirth of the spirit,’ she said, ‘but it is against the Christian teaching.’
He nodded. His eyes were smiling. ‘I know it is. Yet still I believe it. It comforts me to think that we shall meet again in another time.’
Her eyes closed. A small smile touched her lips. ‘It comforts me, too,’ she said softly. ‘Next time we shall be together always. Next time we shall not fail.’
Chapter 1 (#ulink_c9556483-e057-55ee-944f-8aa8125d982f)
Palace of Holyroodhouse, Scotland, November 1596
King James paused with his hand already raised to the iron latch. Even now he was not sure that he was doing the right thing. A spiteful winter wind skittered along the stone corridor, lifting the tapestries from the walls and setting him shivering deep within his fur-lined tunic.
The pearl and the mirror should be given to Elizabeth, that was indisputable; they were her birthright. Yet this was a dangerous gift. James knew their power.
The Queen of England had made no show of her baptismal present to her goddaughter and namesake. In fact it was widely believed that Mr Robert Bowes of Aske, who had stood proxy for Her Majesty at the christening, had brought no gift with him at all. It was only after the service had been completed, the baby duly presented as the first daughter of Scotland, and the guests had dispersed to enjoy the feast, that Aske had called James to one side and passed him a velvet box in which rested the Sistrin pearl and the jewelled mirror.
‘These belonged to your mother,’ Bowes had said. ‘Her Majesty is eager that they should be passed to her granddaughter.’
For diplomacy’s sake James had bitten back the retort that had sprung to his lips. Trust the old bitch of England to present as a gift those items that were his daughter’s by right. But then he could play this game as well as any; he had paid Elizabeth of England the compliment of naming his firstborn girl after her. It was outrageous flattery for his mother’s murderer, but politics was of more import than spilt blood.
‘Majesty?’
He turned. Alison Hay, the baby’s mistress-nurse was approaching. Her face bore no trace of surprise or alarm, although he could only imagine her speculation in finding King James of Scotland dithering outside his baby daughter’s chambers. He should have thought to send for one of the Princess Elizabeth’s attendants rather than to loiter like a fool in cold corridors. But Mistress Hay’s arrival had brought with it relief. There was now no cause to knock or to enter this realm of women. James’ insides curdled at the thought of the stench of the room, of stale sweat and that sweetly sour smell that seemed to cling to a baby. The women would all be grouped about the child’s cradle, fussing and smiling and clucking like so many hens. Thank God that soon they would all be departing for Linlithgow where the princess would have her own household under the guardianship of Lord and Lady Livingston.
He groped in his pocket and his fingers closed over the black velvet of the box.
‘This is for the Princess Elizabeth. A baptismal gift.’ He held it out to her.
Mistress Hay did not take the box immediately. A frown creased her brow.
‘Would Your Majesty not prefer to give it to Lady Livingston—’
‘No!’ James was desperate to be rid of the burden, desperate to be gone. ‘Take it.’ He pushed it at her. The box fell between their hands, springing open, the contents rolling out onto the stone floor.
He heard Mistress Hay gasp.
Few men – or women – had seen either the Sistrin pearl or the jewelled mirror. The pearl had never been worn and the mirror had never been used. Both were shaped like teardrops. Both shone with an unearthly bluish-white glow, the one seeming a reflection of the other: matched, equal, alike.
The pearl had been born of water, found in the oyster beds of the River Tay centuries before, and had been part of the collection of King Alexander I. The mirror had been forged in fire by the glassblowers of Murano, its frame decorated with diamonds of the finest quality and despatched as a gift to James’ mother Mary, Queen of Scots on her marriage. Mary had delighted in the similarity of the two and had had the rich black velvet box made for them.
Yet from the first there had been rumours about both pieces. The Sistrin pearl was said to have formed from the tears of the water goddess Briant and to offer its owner powerful protection, but if its magic was misused it would bring death through water. There were whispers that the Sistrin had caused King Alexander’s wife Sybilla to drown when Alexander had tried to bind its power to his will. The mirror was also a potent charm, but it was said that it would wreak devastation by fire if it were used for corrupt purposes. James was a rational man of science and he did not believe in magic, but something about the jewels set the hairs rising on his neck. If he had been of a superstitious disposition he would have said that it was almost as though he could feel their power like a living thing; crouched, waiting.
Alison Hay was on her knees now, scrabbling to catch the pearl before it rolled away and was lost down a drain or through a crack in the floor. James did not trouble to help. He did not want to touch it. The mirror lay where it had fallen, facing up, miraculously unbroken.
Alison grabbed the pearl and struggled to her feet, flushed, breathing hard. In one hand she had the box, the pearl safely back within it, glowing with innocent radiance. In the other she held the mirror. As James watched, she glanced down at its milky blue surface. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. James snatched it from her, bundling it roughly face down into the box and snapping the lid shut.
‘Don’t look into it,’ he said. ‘Never look into it.’
It was too late. Her face was chalk white, eyes blank pools.
‘What did you see?’ James’ voice was harsh with emotion. Terror gripped him, visceral, setting his heart pounding. Then, as she did not reply: ‘Answer me!’
‘Fire,’ she said. She spoke flatly as if by rote, ‘Buildings eaten by flame. Gunpowder. Death. And a child in a cream-coloured gown with a crown of gold.’
‘Twaddle.’ James gripped the box as though he could crush the contents; crush the very idea of them. ‘Superstitious nonsense, all of it.’ Yet even he could hear the hollow ring of fear in his voice. Before magic, cold reason fled.
‘Lock them away,’ he said, pushing the box back into the nurse’s hands. ‘Keep them safe.’
‘Majesty.’ She dropped a curtsey.
It was done. From behind the closed door he heard the thin wail of a baby and the murmur of female voices joined in a soothing lullaby. James turned on his heel and walked away, heading for the courtyard and the fresh clean air of winter to chase away the shadow that stalked him. Yet even outside under a crystalline grey sky plump with snow he was not free of guilt. He had given the Sistrin and the mirror to his baby daughter, as the Queen of England had commanded, but it felt that in some terrible way he had cursed her with it.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_18425b2a-016a-581f-bb06-98b5f43ef7ae)
Wassenaer Hof, The Hague, autumn 1631
There was a full moon and a cold easterly wind when the Knights of the Rosy Cross came. The wind came from the sea, crossing the wide sand dunes and whipping through the streets to curl about the corners of the Wassenaer Hof, seeking entry through cracks and crannies.
Elizabeth watched the knights’ arrival from her window high in the western wing of the palace. The moonlight dimmed the candles and fell pitilessly bright on the cobbles. In that white world the men were no more than dark cloaked shadows.
She had thought that such folly was over. The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross belonged to a time long ago. It had been a dream borne of their youth. She and her husband Frederick had been so passionate about it once. They had been possessed of a desire to change the world, to spread knowledge, science and wisdom. Their court at Heidelberg had been a refuge for scholars and philosophers.
Now she felt so very different, drained of faith, betrayed, as flimsy as the playing card for which she was named the Queen of Hearts.
She was a pale reflection; an echo fading into the dark. Men had called her union with Frederick the marriage of Thames and Rhine; a political match between a German prince and an English princess destined to strengthen the Protestant cause. She had not cared for such things. She had not been educated for politics then. It had been simple; one look at Frederick and she had fallen in love. They had wed in winter but she had felt blessed by light and fortune. Frederick’s ascent to the throne of Bohemia had been the final glory. The future had been so bright, but it had been a false dawn followed by nothing but grief and loss. Bohemia had been lost in battle after only a year, Frederick’s own lands overrun by his enemies. They had fled to The Hague to a makeshift court and a makeshift life.
Elizabeth rested one hand on her swollen belly. After eighteen years of marriage and twelve children, people spoke of her love for Frederick in terms of indulgence, never questioning her devotion. They knew nothing.
Tonight she was so angry. She knew why Frederick had summoned the knights. There was new hope, he said. Their long exile would soon be over. The Swedish King had smashed the army of the Holy Roman Emperor and was sweeping through Germany in triumph. Frederick wanted the Knights of the Rosy Cross to scry for him, to see whether Gustavus Adolphus’ victory would give him back his patrimony. He had taken both the Sistrin pearl and the crystal mirror with him to foretell the future; the knights demanded it. But the treasures were not Frederick’s to take; they were hers.
Elizabeth felt restless. Her rooms were noisy. They always were; her ladies chattered louder than her monkeys. She was never alone. Tonight though, she was in no mood for music or masques or cards. Suddenly the repetition of her life, the sameness, the tedium, the hopes raised and dashed time and again, made her so frustrated that she shook with fury.
‘Majesty?’ One of her ladies spoke timidly.
‘Fetch my cloak,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The plain black.’
They bustled around her like anxious hens. She should not go out. His Majesty would not like it. It was too cold. She was with child. She should be resting.
She ignored them all and closed the door on their clucking. Down the stairs, along the stone corridor, past the great hall with its gilded leather, where the servants were sweeping and tidying after supper, out into the courtyard, feeling the sting of the cold air. She passed the stables and as always the scent of horses, leather and hay comforted her. Riding – hunting – made her life of exile tolerable.
She looked back across the yard at the lights of the palace winking behind their brightly coloured leaded panes. She had never considered the Wassenaer Hof to be her home, even though she had lived in The Hague for over ten years now. They still called her the Queen of Bohemia, but in truth she reigned over nothing but this palace of red brick with its jostling gables and ridiculous little towers.
The building was swallowed in shadows. Here in the gardens there was the sharp scent of clipped box that always caught in her throat and the sweet smokiness of camomile. The gravel of the parterre crunched beneath her feet. She could never walk here without thinking of the gardens Frederick had designed for her at Heidelberg Castle, with their grottoes and cascades, their orange trees and their statuary. All had been on a grand scale that had matched Frederick’s ambition. All gone. She had heard that an artillery battery now stood on the site of her English Garden. As for Frederick’s ambition, she had believed that had been crushed too, struck down at the Battle of the White Mountain, buried under the losses that had bruised his honour and his fortune alike. But then, tonight, he had sent for the Knights of the Rosy Cross and brought them here, to the water tower, to tell him if his fortunes would rise again.
He had taken their son, too. Charles Louis was a mere thirteen years old, but Frederick had said it was time his heir should see what the future held for him. That had angered Elizabeth too. She had already lost one son and kept Charles Louis close. He was too precious to put in danger.
She drew the hood of the cloak more closely about her face. The scrape of the metal latch sounded loud in her ears; the wall sconce flared in the draught. She closed the door softly behind her and started to descend the stone steps to the well, taking care to make no noise. It was odd that for all that the old tower was dry and the stair well lit, she felt as though the water had seeped into the very stones and now lapped around her, inimical and cold. She had hated water ever since it had taken the life of her eldest son two years before. Even now, his drowning haunted her dreams. She could not shake the belief that in some way she and Frederick had brought the loss upon themselves through the misuse of the Sistrin pearl’s magic. Her father had warned her of its power and told her it should never be used for personal gain.
Elizabeth shivered, clutching the edge of her cloak closer to ward off the cold. Below she could hear the sound of water now; when the well was full the overflow from the Bosbeek, the forest stream, flowed through an arched drain and out into the Hofvijver Lake. Tonight it sang softly as it ran. The music of the water was a good omen. Frederick would be pleased.
Another step and she passed the guardroom on the left. Shadows shifted behind the half-open door. She held her breath and trod more softly still, down towards the sacred well.
At the bottom of the spiral stair the space opened out into a room with a vaulted ceiling held aloft by stone pillars. It was familiar to her, as were the items on a table to the right: a bible, a skull, an hourglass, a compass and a globe, the tools of the Knights’ trade. Flames burned high in a wide stone fireplace, the golden light rippled over the water of a star-shaped well in the opposite corner of the room. The Knights were kneeling around the edge. The well had a shallow inner shelf and Elizabeth knew they would have placed the Sistrin pearl on that ledge, in its natural element of water. They were waiting for the jewel to exert its magic and reflect the future in the crystal mirror.
Light fractured from the crosses each man wore, some silver, some a soft rose gold that seemed to glow with a radiance of its own. Elizabeth could see the mirror in Frederick’s hand, the diamonds shining with the same dark fire as the crosses. She did not look at the reflection in the glass itself. She feared the mirror’s visions.
The heat was overpowering and the air laden with smoke and the sweet-woody scent of frankincense. The sun, moon and stars on the knights’ robes seemed to spin before her eyes. Her head ached sharply. Caught off guard, Elizabeth took a step back. She put out a hand to steady herself against one of the stone pillars but met thin air.
Someone caught her from behind, his hand over her mouth, one arm about her waist, pulling her out of the room, swinging the door shut behind them. It was sudden and shocking; no one touched the Queen, least of all manhandled her. Instinct took over; instincts she did not know she possessed. She bit down hard, tasting the tang of leather against her tongue, and he released her at once, though the bite could not have hurt and nor could her feeble attempts to lash out with boots or elbows.
‘Hellcat.’ His voice was deep and he sounded amused, as though her puny efforts were pitiful. She was the one who was angry and she allowed herself to indulge in it.
‘You fool.’ She spun around to face him. She was shaken, ruffled, more than she ought to have been. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
She saw his eyes widen, hazel eyes, which held more than a hint of laughter. In the flaring torchlight she could see he was of no more than average height, which still made him several inches taller than she. He looked strong though, and durable. His hair was a rich chestnut, curling over the white lace of his collar, his nose straight, a cleft in his chin. And even in this moment of stupefaction, even as he recognised her, there was still amusement in his face rather than the deference he should be showing her.
‘Your Majesty.’ He bowed.
She waited, haughty. His lips twitched.
‘Forgive me,’ he said smoothly, after a moment. Nothing more, and it did not sound like a request, still less like an apology.
He was young, this man, a good deal younger than she was, possibly no more than two- or three-and-twenty. Elizabeth thought she recognised him, though she did not know his name. She could see he was a soldier not a courtier. Unlike the Knights of the Rosy Cross he was clad plainly in shirt, breeches, cloak and boots. There was a sword at his side and a knife in his belt.
Heat and sudden tiredness hit her again, making her sway. Perhaps her ladies had been right, damn them. She was six months pregnant and should have been resting.
The expression in his eyes changed from amusement to concern. He took her hand, drawing her forwards.
‘Come into the guardroom—’
‘No!’ She hung back. ‘I don’t want anyone to see me …’
‘There is no one here but me.’
She allowed him to usher her through the door into the small chamber. It was Spartan, with a bare floor and one candle on a battered table. A meagre fire glowed in the grate. It was no place for a Queen but there was a chair, hard and wooden, and Elizabeth sank down onto it gratefully.
‘You are guarding the ceremony alone?’ she asked.
‘I am.’ He looked rueful. ‘Badly, it would seem.’
She smiled at that. ‘You could not have anticipated this.’
‘That the Queen herself would choose to come and watch?’ He shrugged, half-turning aside to pour her a cup of water from the carafe on the table. ‘I suppose not.’
‘I am a member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I have every right to be here.’
His hand stilled. He turned back, dark brows raised. ‘Then why not exercise that right openly? Why creep in like a thief?’
Few things surprised Elizabeth these days. Few people challenged her. It was one of the privileges of royal blood, to be unquestioned. ‘Never explain, never complain’ was an adage that her mother, fair, frivolous Anne of Denmark, had taught her. This man evidently thought that a commoner might question a queen.
All the same she chose to ignore his question, tasting the water he passed her instead, which was warm and brackish but not altogether unpleasant.
‘I don’t believe I know you,’ she said.
He bowed again. ‘William Craven. Entirely at your service.’
Many men had said those words to her over the years. The court was crowded with young men such as this William Craven; men who dedicated themselves and their swords to her service. She knew that some saw her as a princess in distress, others as a martyr to the Protestant cause, unfailingly courageous in the face of adversity. Sometimes she wanted to tell them that there was no place for romantic gallantry in either war or politics. The years of exile had taught her that war was brutal and dangerous, and that politics were corrupt and ground on tediously slowly. But of course she never said so. They all maintained the pretence.
‘Lord Craven,’ she said. ‘Of course. I have heard much about you.’
His mouth turned down at the corners. ‘I too have heard what men say about me at the court.’
She met his gaze very directly. ‘What do they say?’
He smiled ruefully and she saw the lines deepen around his eyes and drive a crease down one lean cheek. He still looked young, but not as young as before. ‘That my father was a shop-keeper and my grandfather a farm labourer; that I bought my barony; that I owe my place in the world to my father’s money and your brother’s need for it.’ Despite his ruefulness he sounded comfortable with the malice. Or perhaps he had heard it so many times before that it had ceased to sting.
‘Charles is perennially in need of money,’ Elizabeth said. ‘As am I myself.’
Craven’s eyes widened at that, then he laughed, deep and appreciative. ‘Plain dealing,’ he said. ‘From a queen. That is uncommon.’
So they had both surprised the other.
Elizabeth put the cup of water down on the flagstone by her chair. ‘What I actually meant was that I had heard Prince Maurice speak highly of your talents as a soldier. He said you are loyal and courageous.’
Craven shifted, the table creaking as he leaned his weight against it. ‘Prince Maurice said I was reckless,’ he corrected gently. ‘It’s not the same.’
‘He spoke of your bravery and skill,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Take the compliment when it is offered, Lord Craven.’
He inclined his head although she was not sure whether it was simply to hide the laughter brimming in his eyes. ‘Majesty.’
There was no doubt, the man lacked deference. As the grandson of a farm labourer he should not have had a manner so easy it bordered on insolence. Yet Elizabeth found she liked it. She liked the way he did not flatter and fawn.
The silence started to settle between them. It felt comfortable. She knew she should go before the ceremony ended; before Frederick came looking for her. She had told him she wanted no part of the ceremony tonight and to be found here would invite questions. Yet still she did not move.
‘You are not one of the Order?’ she asked, gesturing towards the door to the water chamber.
He shook his head. ‘Merely a humble squire. I don’t believe—’ He broke off sharply. For the first time she sensed constraint in him.
‘You don’t believe in the principles of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘You don’t believe in a better world, in seeking universal harmony?’
His face was half-shadowed, his expression difficult to read. ‘Such ambitions seem worthy indeed,’ he said slowly, ‘but I am a simple man, Your Majesty, a soldier. How might this universal harmony be achieved?’
Ten years earlier, Elizabeth might have told him it would be through the study of the wisdom of the ancient past, through philosophy and science. She had believed in the cause then, believed that they might build a better world. But the words were hollow to her now, as was the promise that the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross had held for the future.
‘… Scrying in the waters.’ Craven’s voice drowned out the clamour of her memories. He sounded disapproving. ‘Sometimes it is better not to know what the future holds.’
Elizabeth agreed with that. If she had known her future ten years ago she was not sure she would have had the strength to go forwards towards it.
‘The Knights have powerful magic.’ She could not resist teasing him. ‘They can read secret thoughts. They can pass through locked doors. They can even turn base metal into gold.’
She thought she heard him snort. ‘As the son of a merchant, I know better than most how gold is made and it is not from base metal.’
Their eyes met. Elizabeth smiled. The silence seemed to hum gently between them, alive with something sharp and curious.
‘Are you wed, Lord Craven?’ she asked on impulse.
Craven looked surprised but no more so than Elizabeth felt. She had absolutely no idea as to why she would ask a near stranger such an impertinent question
‘No, I am not wed,’ Craven answered, after a moment. ‘There was a betrothal to the daughter of the Earl of Devonshire—’ He stopped.
A Cavendish, Elizabeth thought. He looked high indeed for the son of a merchant. But then if he was as rich as men said he would be courted on all sides for money, whilst those who sought it sniped at his common ancestry behind his back.
‘What happened?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I preferred soldiering.’
‘Poor woman.’ Elizabeth could not imagine being dismissed with a shrug and a careless sentence. That was not the lot of princesses. If they were not beautiful men pretended that they were. If they were fortunate enough to possess beauty, charm and wit then poets wrote sonnets to them and artists had no need to flatter them in portraits. She had lived with that truth since she was old enough to look in the mirror and know she had beauty and more to spare.
‘Soldiering and marriage don’t mix,’ Craven said bluntly.
‘But a man needs an heir to his estates,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Especially a man with a fortune as great as yours.’
‘I have two brothers,’ Craven said. His tone had eased. ‘They are my heirs.’
‘It’s not the same as having a child of your own,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Do not all men want a son to follow them?’
‘Or a daughter,’ Craven said.
‘Oh, daughters …’ Elizabeth’s wave of the hand dismissed them. ‘We are useful enough when required to serve a dynastic purpose, but it is not the same.’
His gaze came up and caught hers, hard, bright, challenging enough to make her catch her breath. ‘Do you truly believe that? That you are the lesser sex?’
She had never questioned it.
‘I heard men say,’ Craven said, ‘that King Charles believes he gets better sense from you, his sister, than from his brother-in-law.’
Insolence again. But Elizabeth was tempted into a smile.
‘Perhaps my brother is not a good judge of character,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you should value yourself more highly, Majesty.’ His gaze released hers and she found she could breathe again.
‘History demonstrates the truth.’ Craven had turned slightly away, settling the smouldering log deeper into the fire with his booted foot. ‘Your own godmother, the Queen of England, was a very great ruler.’
‘I think sometimes that she was a man,’ Elizabeth said.
Craven looked startled. Then he gave a guffaw. ‘In heart and spirit perhaps. Yet there are plenty of men lesser than she. My father admired her greatly and he was the shrewdest, hardest judge of character I know.’ He refilled the cup with water; offered it to her. Elizabeth shook her head.
‘Did not the perpetrators of the Gunpowder Treason intend for you to reign?’ Craven said. ‘They must have believed you could be Queen of England.’
‘I would have been a Catholic puppet.’ Elizabeth shuddered. ‘Reign, yes. Rule, most certainly not.’
‘And in Bohemia?’
‘Frederick was King,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I was his consort.’ She smiled at him. ‘You seek to upset the natural order of things, Lord Craven, by putting women so high.’
‘Craven!’ The air stirred, the door of the chamber swung open and Frederick strode in, his cloak of red swirling about him. In contrast to Craven, austere and dark, he looked as gaudy as a court magician. Craven straightened, bowing. Elizabeth felt odd, bereft, as though some sort of link between them had been snapped too abruptly. Craven’s attention was all on Frederick now. That was what it meant to rule, even if it was in name only. Frederick demanded and men obeyed.
‘The lion rises!’ Frederick was more animated than Elizabeth had seen him in months. Melancholy had lifted from his long, dark face. His eyes burned. Elizabeth realised that he was so wrapped up in the ceremony that he was still living it. He seemed barely to notice her presence let alone question what she was doing alone in the guardroom with his squire. He drew Charles Louis into the room too and threw an arm expansively about his heir’s shoulders.
This is our triumph, his gesture said. I will recapture our patrimony.
‘The lion rises!’ Frederick repeated. ‘We will have victory! I will re-take Heidelberg whilst the eagle falls.’ He clapped Charles Louis on the shoulder. ‘We all saw the visions in the mirror, did we not, my son? The pearl and the glass together prophesied for us as they did in times past.’
A violent shiver racked Elizabeth. The mirror and the pearl had shown Frederick a war-torn future. She remembered the flames reflected in the water, turning it the colour of blood.
‘The lion is the Swedish king’s emblem,’ she said. It was also Frederick’s heraldic device but she thought it much more likely that it would be Gustavus Adolphus whose fortunes would rise further whilst Frederick would lie where he had fallen, unwanted, ignored. He was no solider. He could not lead, let alone re-take his capital.
She caught Craven’s gaze and realised that he was thinking exactly the same thing as she. There was a warning in his eyes though; Frederick was frowning, a petulant cast to his mouth.
‘It was my emblem,’ he said, sounding like a spoilt child. ‘It was my lion we saw.’
Craven was covering Elizabeth’s tactlessness with words of congratulation.
‘Splendid news, Your Majesty,’ he said smoothly. ‘Do you plan to raise an army to join the King of Sweden’s forces immediately?’
‘Not now!’ Elizabeth said involuntarily. The room seemed cold of a sudden, a wind blowing through it, setting her shivering. Her hand strayed to her swollen belly. ‘The baby …’ she said.
Frederick’s face was a study in indecision. ‘Of course,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I must stay to see you safely delivered of the child, my dear.’ His kiss on her cheek was wet, clumsy. It felt as though his mind was already far away. ‘I will write to his Swedish Majesty and prepare the ground,’ he said. ‘There is much to plan.’
The cold inside Elizabeth intensified. She tried to tell herself it was only the shock of their fortunes changing after so many impotent years, but it felt deeper and darker than that. She knew with a sharp certainty that Frederick should not go. It was wrong, dangerous. Although she had not seen the future, she felt as though she had. She felt as though she had looked into the mirror and seen into the heart of grief and loss, seen a landscape that was terrifyingly barren.
‘The winter is no time for campaigning,’ Craven was watching her face. There was a frown between his brows. ‘Besides, there is much to do before we may leave. Troops to send for, supplies to arrange.’ He stopped, started again. ‘Your Majesty—’
Elizabeth realised that he was addressing her. The grip of the darkness released her so suddenly she almost gasped. It felt like a lifting of a curse; she was light-headed.
‘We should get you back to the palace, madam,’ Craven said. ‘You must be tired.’
‘I am quite well, thank you, Lord Craven,’ Elizabeth snapped. She was angry with him. She had thought she had seen something different in him, yet here he was fawning over Frederick like every other courtier she had known. And for all his compliments to her earlier, he spoke to her now as though she were as fragile and inconsequential as any other woman.
Immediately his expression closed down. ‘Of course, Majesty.’
‘Frederick,’ Elizabeth said. ‘If I might take your arm …’
Frederick was impatient. Elizabeth could feel it in him, in the deliberation with which he slowed his steps to help her up the spiral stair, in the tension in the muscles of his arm beneath her hand. He wanted to be back at the Wassenaer Hof, writing letters, planning a conqueror’s return to Germany. She held him back, with her pregnant belly and her woman’s fears. He was solicitous of her, masking his irritation with concern, but she had known him too long to be fooled. War was coming and that was man’s work.
Charles Louis trailed along behind them through the scented garden, scuffing his boots in the gravel, his expression sulky. He appeared to have caught none of his father’s excitement. Elizabeth could hear Craven talking to him. Their voices were too low for her to hear the words, but soon Charles Louis’ tone lifted into animation again. His quicksilver volatility was not easy to control and Elizabeth admired the way Craven had been able to distract him.
The Knights of the Rosy Cross had gone. The gardens were empty; a checkerboard of moon and shadow. Frederick was still talking, of the fall of the city of Leipzig to Gustavus Adolphus, of the destruction of his hated enemy the Spanish general Tilly, of the visions in the mirror, the lion rampant, the walls of Heidelberg rising again, of their future, suddenly so bright.
Elizabeth crushed her doubts and followed her husband into the Wassenaer Hof. The light enveloped them; for a second there was a hush and then Frederick’s blazing enthusiasm seemed to flare like a contagion through the crowds of courtiers and everyone was talking at once, laughing, lit by feverish excitement even though they did not know why they were celebrating. It was then that the cold came back to her, like the turning of a dark tide, setting her shaking so that she had to clutch the high back of one of the chairs to steady herself. The wood dug into her fingers, scoring the skin.
Frederick had not noticed. He was too busy thrusting his way through the crowd, turning to answer men’s questions. It was Craven who was watching, Craven who gestured impatiently for some of her women to come forwards to help her.
‘Lord Craven.’ Elizabeth put her hand on Craven’s arm to halt him when he too would have hurried away.
‘Madam?’ She could not read his expression.
‘You are an experienced soldier.’ Elizabeth spoke abruptly. ‘Watch over my husband for me. Keep him safe. He does not know how …’ She stopped before she betrayed herself, betrayed Frederick, too far, biting back the words on her tongue.
He does not know how to fight.
‘Majesty.’ Craven bowed, his expression still impassive.
‘Thank you,’ Elizabeth said.
He took her hand in his, kissed it. It was a courtier’s gesture, not that of a soldier. His touch was warm and very sure.
He released her, bowed again. She watched him stride away through the throng of people. He did not look back.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_5b63dfce-e0cf-5188-94ad-b2eb9fa3c907)
London, the present day.
Holly was asleep when the call came through on her mobile. She had been working all day and most of the evening on pieces for her latest collection of engraved glass and she was exhausted. She had left her little mews studio and workshop at ten o’clock, had grabbed a quick sandwich and gone to bed.
She swam up from the depths of a dream, groping for the phone that lay on the bedside table. The bright light of the screen made her wince. Normally she switched it off overnight, but she must have forgotten. She and Guy had been quarrelling over her work again. He had stomped off to the spare room, slamming the door, making a theatrical performance of his annoyance. Usually, Holly would have lain awake and fretted that they were arguing again. Just now she was too damned tired to care.
The icon on the screen was her brother’s picture. The time was two seventeen in the morning. The phone rang on and on.
Frowning, Holly pressed the green button to answer. ‘Ben? What on earth are you doing calling at this time—’
‘Aunt Holly?’ The voice at the other end of the line was already talking, high-pitched and breaking with fear, the words lost between sobs and gulps. It was not Ben but his six-year-old daughter, Florence.
‘Aunt Holly, please come! I don’t know what to do. Daddy’s disappeared and I’m on my own here. Please help me! I—’
‘Flo!’ Holly sat up, reaching for the light, her hand slipping in her haste as her niece’s terror seeped into her consciousness and set her heart pounding. ‘Flo, wait! Tell me what’s happened. Where’s Daddy? Where are you?’
‘I’m at the mill.’ Florence was crying. ‘Daddy’s been gone for hours and I don’t know where he is! Aunt Holly, I’m scared! Please come—’ The line crackled, the words breaking up.
‘Flo!’ Holly said again, urgently. ‘Flo—’ But there was nothing other than the rustle and hiss of the line and then a long, empty silence.
‘Are you mad?’
Guy had emerged from the spare room two minutes previously wearing only his crumpled boxer shorts, bleary-eyed, his hair standing on end in bad-tempered spikes.
‘You can’t shoot off to Wiltshire at this time of night,’ he said. ‘What a bloody stupid idea.’
‘It’s Oxfordshire,’ Holly said automatically. She checked the clock, pulling on her boots at the same time. The zip stuck. She wrenched it hard. Two twenty-seven. She had already wasted ten minutes.
She had rung back repeatedly but there had been no reply. The mill house, Ben and Natasha’s holiday cottage, did not have a landline and the mobile reception had always been patchy. You had to be standing in exactly the right place to get a signal.
‘Have you tried Tasha’s mobile?’ Guy asked.
‘She’s working abroad somewhere.’ Ben had told her but Holly couldn’t remember exactly where. ‘I left her a message.’ Tasha had a high-powered job with a TV travel show and was frequently away.
‘Ben’s probably turned up again by now.’ Guy sat down next to her on the bed, putting what she supposed was meant to be a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘Look, Hol, don’t panic. I mean maybe the kid got it wrong—’
‘Her name’s Florence,’ Holly said tightly. It irritated the hell out of her that Guy seldom remembered any of her family or friends’ names, mostly because he didn’t try. ‘She sounded terrified,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do?’ She swung around fiercely on him. ‘Leave her there alone?’
‘Like I said, Ben will have turned up by now.’ Guy smothered a yawn. ‘He probably crept out to meet up with some tart, thinking the kid was asleep and wouldn’t notice. I know that’s what I’d be doing if I was married to that hard-faced bitch.’
‘I daresay,’ Holly said, not troubling to hide the edge in her voice. ‘But Ben’s not like you. He—’ She stopped. ‘Ben would never leave Flo on her own,’ she said.
She stood up. The terrified pounding of her heart had settled to an anxious flutter now, but urgency still beat through her. Two thirty. It would take her an hour and a half to get to Ashdown if there was no traffic. An hour and a half when Flo would be alone and fearful. The terror Holly had felt earlier tightened in her gut. Where the hell was Ben? And why had he not taken his phone with him wherever he had gone? Why leave it in the house?
She racked her brains to remember their last phone conversation. He’d told her that he and Florence were heading to the mill for a long weekend. He’d taken a few days off from his surgery in Bristol. It was the early May Bank Holiday.
‘I’m doing some family history research,’ he’d said, and Holly had laughed, thinking he must be joking, because history of the family or any other sort had never remotely interested her brother before.
She was wasting time.
‘Have you seen my car keys?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Guy followed her into the living room, blinking as she snapped on the main light and flooded the space with brightness.
‘Jesus,’ he said irritably, ‘Now I’m wide awake. You’re determined to ruin my night.’
‘I thought,’ Holly said, ‘that you might come with me.’
The genuine surprise on his face told her everything she needed to know.
‘Why go at all?’ Guy said gruffly, turning away. ‘I still don’t get it. Just call the police, or a neighbour to go over and check it out. Isn’t there some old friend of yours who lives near there? Fiona? Freda?’
‘Fran,’ Holly said. She grabbed her keys off the table. ‘Fran and Iain are away for a couple of days,’ she said. ‘And the reason I’m going—’ she stalked up to him, ‘is because my six-year-old niece is alone and terrified and she called me for help. Do you get it now? She’s a child. She’s frightened. And you’re suggesting I go back to bed and forget about it?’
She picked up her bag, checking for her purse, phone, and tablet. The rattle of the keys had brought Bonnie, her Labrador retriever, in from her basket in the kitchen. She looked wide-awake, feathery tail wagging.
‘No, Bon Bon,’ Holly said. ‘You’re staying—’ She stopped; looked at Guy. He’d forget to feed her, walk her. And anyway, it was comforting to have Bonnie with her. She grabbed Bonnie’s food from the kitchen cupboard and looped her lead over her arm.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’ In the doorway she paused. ‘Shall I call you when I know what’s happened?’ she asked Guy.
He was already disappearing into the bedroom, reclaiming the space she had left. ‘Oh, sure,’ he said, and Holly knew she would not.
Holly rang Ben’s number every couple of minutes but there was never any reply, only the repeated click of the voicemail telling her that Ben was unavailable and that she should leave a message. Eventually that stopped, too. There was no return call from Tasha, either. Holly wondered about calling her grandparents in Oxford. They were much closer to Ashdown Mill and to Florence than she was, though the car was eating up the miles of empty road. The mesmerising slide of the streetlights was left behind and there was nothing but darkness about her now as she drove steadily west.
In the end she decided not to call Hester and John. She didn’t want to give either of them a heart attack, especially when there might be no reason to worry. Even though she was furious with Guy, she knew he might be right. Ben could have returned by now and Florence might be fast asleep again and, with the adaptability of a child, have forgotten that she had even called for help.
Holly had not wanted to call the police for lots of reasons ranging from the practical – that it could be a false alarm – to the less morally justifiable one of not wanting to cause problems for her brother. She and Ben had always protected each other, drawing closer than close after their parents had been killed in a car crash when Holly was eleven and Ben thirteen. They had looked out for each other with a fierce loyalty that had remained fundamentally unchanged over the years. Their understanding of each other was relaxed and easy these days, but just as close, just as deep. Or so Holly had thought before this had happened, leaving her wondering what the hell her brother was up to.
She pushed away the unwelcome suspicion that there might be things about Ben that she neither knew nor understood. Guy had planted the seed of doubt, but she crushed it angrily; she did know that Ben and Tasha were going through a bad patch but she could not imagine Ben being unfaithful. He simply wasn’t the type. Even less could she imagine him neglecting his child. There had to be some other reason for his disappearance, if he had actually vanished.
But there was Florence, who was only six, and she had been alone and terrified. So it was an easy decision in the end. Holly had called the local police, keeping her explanation as short and factual as possible, sounding far calmer than she had felt. If anything happened to Florence and she had not done her best to help, she would have failed Ben as well as her niece.
The sign for Hungerford flashed past, surprising her. She was at the turn already. It was twelve minutes to four. Ahead of her the sky was inky dark, but in her rear-view mirror she thought she could see the first faint light of a spring dawn. Perhaps, though, that was wishful thinking. The truth was that she didn’t feel comfortable in the countryside. She was a city girl through and through, growing up first in Manchester and then in Oxford after her parents had died, moving to London to go to art college and staying there ever since. London was a good place for her glass-engraving business. She had a little gallery and shop in the mews adjoining the flat, and a sizeable clientele.
At the motorway roundabout she turned right towards Wantage then left for Lambourn. She knew the route quite well, but the road looked deceptively different when the only detail she could see was picked out in her headlights. There were curves and turns and shadowed hollows she did not recognise. She was heading deep into the countryside now. A few isolated cottages flashed past, shuttered and dark. She took the right turn for Lambourn and plunged down into the valley, the car’s lights illuminating the white-painted wooden palings of the racehorse gallops that ran beside the road. The little town was silent as she wove her way through the narrow streets. As the stables and houses fell away and the fields rolled back in, Holly had the same feeling she always had on approaching Ashdown; a sense of expectancy she had never quite understood, a feeling of falling back through time as the dark road opened up before her and the hills swept away to her right, bleak and empty, crowned with a weathercock.
She and Ben had raced up to the top of Weathercock Hill as children, throwing themselves down panting in the springy grass at the top, staring up at the weather vane as it pierced the blue of the sky high above. The whole place had felt enchanted.
Ben. Her chest tightened again with anxiety. She was almost there. What would she find?
The lights picked out a huge advertising hoarding by the side of the road. The words flashed past before she could make out more than the first few:
‘Ashdown Park, a select development of historic building conversions …’
Trees pressed close now to the left, rank upon rank of them like an army in battle order. There was a moment when the endless wood fell back and through the gap in the trees Holly thought she saw a gleam of white; a house standing tall and foursquare with the moonlight reflecting off the glass in the cupola and silvering the ball on the roof. A moment later and the vision had gone. The woods closed ranks, thick and forbidding, swallowing the house in darkness.
The left turn took her by surprise and she almost missed it even though she had come this way so many times before. She bumped along the single-track road, past a bus stop standing beside the remains of the crumbling estate wall. The old coach yard was off to the left; it seemed that this was where the majority of the building work was taking place, behind the high brick-and-sarsen wall. Even in the dark Holly could see the grass verge churned up by heavy machinery and the crouching shadow of a mechanical digger. There was another sign here, a discreet one in cream with green lettering, giving the name of the developers and directing all deliveries back to the site office on the main road.
The lane turned left again, running behind the village now, climbing towards the top of the hill. A driveway on the right, a white-painted gatepost flaking to wood beneath and a five-barred gate wedged open by the grasses and dandelions growing through it.
Ashdown Mill.
She stopped on the gravel circle in front of the water mill and turned off the engine. Bonnie gave a little, excited bark. Holly could hear the thud of her tail as the dog waited impatiently to jump out of the back. There were two other cars on the gravel, a small saloon car and Ben’s four-by-four. The exhaustion and relief hit Holly simultaneously. Her shoulders ached with tension. If Ben was here and it had all been a big misunderstanding she would kill him.
She opened her door and slid out, her legs stiff, an ache low in her back. Outside the car the air had a pre-dawn chill to it. The daylight was growing slowly, trickling through the trees and washing away the moon.
Bonnie was running around with her nose to the ground, released from the captivity of the car, a bounce in her step. She chased around the side of the whitewashed mill and disappeared from view. Holly slammed the car door and hurried after her, pushing open the little gate in the picket fence and running up the uneven stone path to the door, calling for Bonnie as she went.
All the lights were on inside the mill. The door opened before she reached it.
‘Ben!’ she burst out. ‘What the hell—’
‘Miss Ansell?’ A uniformed policewoman stood there. ‘I’m PC Marilyn Caldwell. We spoke earlier.’ She had kind eyes in a pale face pinched with tiredness, and there was something in her voice that warned Holly of bad news. Her heart started to thump erratically again. A headache gripped her temples.
She noticed that one of the door panels was splintered and broken.
‘We had to break it to get in.’ There was a note of apology in PC Caldwell’s voice. ‘The handle is too high for Florence to reach.’
‘Yes.’ Holly remembered that the door had a heavy, old-fashioned iron latch. So Ben had not been there when the police had arrived and there was no sign of him now. Her apprehension was edged with something deeper and more visceral now.
She fought back the terror; breathed deeply.
‘Is Florence OK?’
‘She’s fine.’ Marilyn Caldwell laid a reassuring hand on Holly’s arm. She shifted a little so that Holly could see through into the mill’s long living room. Florence was sitting on the sofa next to another female police officer. They were reading together, although Florence’s eyes were droopy with tiredness and puffy with her earlier tears.
Holly’s heart turned over to see her. She took an involuntary step forwards. ‘Can I go to her, please—’
‘Just a moment.’ The note in PC Caldwell’s voice stopped her. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t found your brother, Miss Ansell.’ She was looking at Holly with forensic detachment now. ‘We’ve searched the house and the woods in the close vicinity, also all the roads nearby. There’s no sign.’
Holly was taken aback. Fear fluttered beneath her breastbone again. This was not right.
‘Is that Dr Ansell’s car outside?’ PC Caldwell asked.
‘Yes.’ Holly rubbed her tired eyes. ‘He can’t have driven anywhere.’
‘Perhaps a friend came to pick him up,’ PC Caldwell suggested. ‘Or he walked to meet someone.’
‘In the middle of the night?’ Holly said. ‘Without his phone?’
PC Caldwell’s expression hardened. ‘It’s hardly unknown, Miss Ansell. I imagine he thought Florence was asleep and slipped out. Perhaps he’s lost track of the time.’
‘That would be ridiculously irresponsible.’ Holly felt furious and tried to rein herself in. She was tired, worried. She had driven a long way. She needed to calm down. Evidently PC Caldwell thought so too.
‘We fully expect Dr Ansell to turn up in the morning,’ she said coldly. ‘When he does, please could you let us know? We’d like to have a word.’
‘You’ll have to stand in line,’ Holly said. Then: ‘I’m sorry. Yes, of course. But …’ Doubt and fear stirred within her again. The emotions were nebulous but strong. Her instinct told her that Ben had not simply walked out.
‘He left his phone,’ she said. ‘And all his stuff’s scattered about. It doesn’t look as though he planned to go out.’
PC Caldwell was already signalling discreetly to her colleague that it was time to leave. She seemed completely uninterested.
‘We’ve traced Mrs Ansell,’ she said. ‘She’s on her way back from Spain but might not make it until tomorrow night. Apparently she’s been,’ she checked her note pad, ‘helicopter skiing in the Pyrenees?’ She sounded doubtful.
‘Very probably,’ Holly said dryly. ‘Tasha works for a travel show – Extreme Pleasures?’
‘Oh yes!’ Marilyn Caldwell’s face broke into a smile. ‘Wow! Natasha Ansell. Of course! How exciting. Well—’ She stopped, realising that the situation did not really merit celebrity chit-chat. ‘We’ll be back tomorrow,’ she said. She turned on an afterthought. ‘Do you know what your brother was doing here, Miss Ansell?’
‘It’s his holiday cottage,’ Holly said. ‘We co-own it.’ She rubbed her eyes again, feeling the grittiness of them. Suddenly she was so tired she wanted to sleep where she was standing. ‘He was down here with Flo whilst Tasha was away working,’ she said. ‘He said he was doing some research. Family history. It’s quiet here. A good place to think.’
PC Caldwell nodded. ‘Right,’ she said. Holly could see her wondering how on earth someone as glamorous as Tasha could be mixed up in a messy situation like this with a man whose idea of fun was family history research.
‘Well,’ the policewoman said. ‘We’ll call back to chat to Mrs Ansell tomorrow.’
I bet you will, Holly thought.
She felt utterly furious, livid with PC Caldwell for being more interested in Tasha’s fame than in Ben’s disappearance, angry that Tasha hadn’t even bothered to ring her to make sure it was OK for her to look after Flo until she got back, and most annoyed of all with Ben for vanishing without a word. The anger helped her, because behind it the fear still lurked, the sense that something was wrong and out of kilter, that Ben would never voluntarily disappear leaving his daughter alone.
Bonnie, picking up on Holly’s mood, made a soft whickering noise and Holly saw Florence look up from the storybook. Her niece’s eyes lit up to see them and she scrambled from the sofa.
‘Aunt Holly!’ Florence rushed towards her, arms outstretched. ‘You came!’ Holly scooped her up automatically, feeling the softness of Florence’s cheek pressed against hers, inhaling the scent of soap and shampoo. Florence clung like a limpet, her hot tears scalding Holly’s neck. Holly could feel her niece’s fear and desolation and her heart ached for her. Security was such a fragile thing when you were a child. She understood that better than most.
‘Hello Flo,’ she said gently. ‘Of course I came. I’ll always come when you call me. You know that.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’ Florence was wailing. ‘Why has he gone away?’
‘I don’t know,’ Holly said, hugging her tighter. ‘He’ll be back soon. I’m sure of it.’ She wished she were.
Later, when Florence had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, Holly carried her niece upstairs in the pale light of the May dawn and put her gently on the big double bed in the main bedroom with her toy rabbit cuddled up in her arms. Then she went over to the window seat and leaning her head back against the panelled wall, closed her eyes for a moment.
Although as children she and Ben had shared the smaller bedroom next door, this was the room she had been drawn to every time. She loved the way the light poured in from the high windows.
So early, the room was still full of morning shadow. Ben’s stuff was scattered all around; a shirt discarded over the arm of the chair, his watch on the chest of drawers, the bed half-made. It looked as though he had just stepped out for a second and would be back at any moment and that disturbed Holly more than it reassured her. This was all so out of character.
Nostalgia and a feeling almost like grief caught her sharply in her chest. She remembered how, as children, she and Ben would imagine the bed as a flying carpet taking them to faraway lands. They had told each other stories more spectacular, adventurous and exciting than any they had read in books. It had been magical. There had even been a little compartment hidden beneath the cushion on the window seat where they would leave each other secret messages …
The breath stopped in her throat. Softly, so as not to wake Florence, Holly slipped off the seat and lifted the cushion up. The little brass handle she remembered was still there. She pulled. Nothing happened. The box lid seemed wedged shut. She tugged a little harder.
The wood lifted with a scrape that she was afraid for a moment would wake Florence, but the child did not stir. Holly knelt down and peered inside.
There was nothing there except for a receipt for some dry cleaning, a dead spider and a misshapen yellow pebble.
Holly felt an absurd sense of disappointment and loss. What had she imagined – that Ben would have left her a secret message to explain where he had gone? No matter how wrong it felt to her that he had simply vanished into thin air, she had to believe that the police were correct. Come morning Ben would walk in full of anxiety for Flo and apologies and relief, explaining … But here Holly’s imagination failed her. She could not think of a single reason why he would do what he had done.
Eventually, when she felt calm enough, she went and curled up next to Florence on the big double bed. She didn’t sleep but lay listening to Florence’s breathing and felt a little bit comforted. After a while she fell into an uneasy doze, Bonnie resting across her feet.
She was woken some time later by an insistent ringing sound. For a moment she felt happy before the memory of what had happened rushed in, swamping her consciousness. She stumbled from the bed and down the stairs, making a grab for her bag and the phone, wondering if it was Guy calling to see what had happened.
But it wasn’t her mobile that was ringing. She found Ben’s phone halfway down the side of the sofa and pressed the button to answer the call.
‘Dr Ansell?’ It was a voice she didn’t recognise, male, slightly accented, sounding pleasant and business-like. ‘This is Espen Shurmer. My apologies for calling you so early but I wanted to catch you to confirm our meeting on Friday—’
‘This isn’t Ben,’ Holly said quickly. ‘I’m his sister.’
There was a pause at the other end. ‘My apologies again.’ The man sounded faintly amused. ‘If you would be so good as to pass me over to Dr Ansell.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Holly said. ‘He’s not here. I …’ She could feel herself stuttering, still half-asleep. She wasn’t sure why she had answered the call and now she didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m afraid he’s disappeared,’ she blurted out.
This time the silence at the other end of the line was more prolonged. Just when she thought Espen Shurmer had hung up, and was feeling grateful for it, he spoke again.
‘Disappeared? As in you do not know where he is?’ He sounded genuinely interested.
‘Yes,’ Holly said. ‘Last night.’ She was not sure why she was telling this man so much when he was probably no more than a business acquaintance of Ben’s. ‘So I’m afraid I don’t know if he’ll be able to make your meeting … I mean, if he comes back I’ll tell him, but I can’t guarantee he’ll be there …’ She let her voice trail away, feeling an absolute fool.
‘Miss Ansell,’ the man at the other end said, ‘Forgive me for not introducing myself properly. My name is Espen Shurmer and I am a collector of seventeenth-century artefacts, paintings, glass, jewellery …’ He paused. ‘I had arranged to meet your brother on Friday night at 7.30pm after a private view at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He contacted me a couple of weeks ago to request the meeting.’
‘Oh.’ Holly was at a loss. ‘Well, I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Mr Shurmer, but I have no idea what Ben wanted to talk to you about. Actually I’m very surprised he got in touch. Art isn’t really his thing …’ She stopped again, realising she was still babbling even if what she was saying was true. Ben had zero interest in the arts. He had always supported her engraving career and had even bought a couple of her glass paperweights for his surgery, but she had known it had only been because she had made them herself. She had loved him for it but she was under no illusions about his interest in culture.
‘I know what it was that your brother wished to discuss, Miss Ansell,’ Espen Shurmer said. ‘He wanted some information on a certain pearl, a legendary stone of great worth.’
Holly sat down abruptly. ‘A … pearl?’ She said. She thought she had misheard. ‘As in a piece of jewellery? Are you sure? I mean …’ It was possible that Ben might have been buying a gift for Natasha, but she was certain he would have bought a modern piece rather than approaching an antiques collector. Such an idea would never even have crossed his mind.
‘I think we should meet to discuss this,’ the man said, after a moment. ‘It is most important. If your brother is unable to keep the appointment, would you be able to come in his place, Miss Ansell? I should be extremely grateful.’
Holly hadn’t even thought about what would happen beyond the next few hours, let alone on Friday. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Shurmer, but Ben will probably be back by then and anyway, this is nothing to do with me.’
‘Seven thirty at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,’ Shurmer said, cutting in so smoothly she barely noticed the interruption. ‘I should be greatly honoured if you choose to be there, Miss Ansell,’ he added with old-fashioned courtesy.
The line clicked as the call went dead.
Holly put the phone down slowly, found her bag and grabbed her tablet. She typed in the name Espen Shurmer and the time, the date and the name of the Ashmolean Museum. The information came up at once – a lecture and private view of portraits and artefacts from the court in exile of Elizabeth, the Winter Queen, sister of King Charles I, which preceded a major new exhibition starting at the end of May. Espen Shurmer, she read, was a Dutch collector of 17
-century painting and glass, and he had donated a number of items to the museum.
She felt a pang of regret as she closed the tablet. She would have loved to see an exhibition of seventeenth-century artefacts and talk to a renowned expert. But there would be no need. Ben would be back soon, she was sure of it. She had to be sure because there was Flo to console and there were her own fears to fight. The longer Ben was absent, the more those shadows grew like monsters, the fear that Ben would never come back and she would be alone again, totally alone this time, like they had been after their parents had died, only so much worse …
She fought back the panic. It was important to keep busy. She needed to make breakfast for Flo, then they could both take Bonnie for a walk, and by then Ben would be home …
But Ben had not come back by lunchtime when Holly drove down to the deli to fetch sandwiches, nor was he back by three when they came back from another walk in the woods with Bonnie. All day Holly had felt her anxiety rising and squashed it down relentlessly, but it grew inside her, filling the empty spaces, filling her mind so she found it almost impossible to concentrate on anything. When she heard a car coming up the track towards the mill she had to restrain herself from running outside to see if it was Ben.
‘It’s Mummy!’ Flo had none of Holly’s reticence and had bounded up from the painting they had been doing to rush out of the door, Bonnie at her heels. Holly followed them more slowly. She and her sister-in-law had always had a brittle relationship. Ben had been a link between them, but now he was missing, and Holly felt suddenly wary.
Tasha, looking as elegant as though she was stepping onto the catwalk, slammed the door of her little red sports car and came hurrying across the gravel on her vertiginously high heels.
‘What the fuck is all this about?’ She demanded without preamble, meeting Holly by the gate. ‘I’ve had to come all the way back from Spain! Where is he, the stupid bastard?’
Holly blinked. Tasha seemed to notice Flo for the first time and bent down to pick her up. ‘Hello darling.’ She held Flo and her sticky painting fingers a little bit away from her. ‘Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m here now.’ She gave Bonnie a vertical pat, designed as much to push her away as greet her. Tasha was not a pet person.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Holly said.
‘I don’t want to stay,’ Tasha said, taking off her sunglasses and fixing Holly with her big blue eyes. ‘I’m going home to Bristol. I’m not hanging around here waiting for Ben to turn up when he feels like it. Have you got Flo’s bag?’
‘It’s not packed,’ Holly said coldly, ‘since you didn’t let me know you were coming.’ She was too exhausted for tact. She and Tasha had never been close; she had tried to like her sister-in-law but it had proved very difficult.
‘Sorry.’ To Holly’s surprise Tasha seemed to deflate all of a sudden like a pricked balloon. ‘I really do appreciate you coming down, Holly, and looking after Flo. But I’m just so bloody angry! It’s just not on for Ben simply to walk out on all his commitments—’
‘Wait.’ Holly put a hand on Tasha’s arm. ‘What do you mean? Surely you don’t think he’s just upped and gone?’
‘That’s exactly what I think,’ Tasha said fiercely, scrubbing at her eyes. She pushed the dark glasses firmly back down on her nose. ‘He was spending all his spare time down here. He’s probably got another woman, for all I know.’
‘He was doing family history research,’ Holly protested.
Her sister-in-law gave a look of such searing scorn that she blushed.
‘Yeah, and I’m Marilyn Monroe,’ Tasha said.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Holly said. She was so outraged she forgot that Flo was listening, taking it all in with her blue eyes wide, so like her mother’s. ‘Hell, Tasha, you know Ben would never do a thing like that! He’d certainly never leave Flo alone! And besides, where would he go? He’d never disappear without telling anyone!’
‘You mean you think he’d never vanish without telling you,’ Tasha said, a hint of pity in her voice now that set Holly’s teeth on edge. ‘Oh Holly …’ She shook her head. ‘I know you think the two of you are really close but you don’t know Ben that well. Trust me.’ She took Flo’s hand. ‘Come on, sweetie, let’s go and get your stuff.’
Holly watched them walk up the path together and into the mill. Desolation swamped her, along with a terrible fear that her sister-in-law might be right. Secretly she had always believed she knew Ben better than anyone, even his wife. Had Ben hidden the truth of deeper fissures in his marriage? Holly could not believe it.
The sun, sparkling on the millpond, dazzled her eyes. Suddenly she felt close to tears. It felt as though she was trapped in a world where nothing was what it seemed and she was the only one trying to keep a tenuous faith. Beside her, Bonnie stood tense, her head tilted to one side, picking up on her mood once again.
‘Come on, Bon Bon,’ Holly said, suddenly fierce. ‘I know this isn’t right. I don’t care what everyone else says.’
Back in the mill she could hear Tasha moving about upstairs. The floorboards creaked and then Tasha and Flo appeared at the top of the stairs, Flo looking sulky and bumping her suitcase on each step. Tasha had Ben’s holdall in one hand and a cross expression.
‘I’m sure he’ll turn up, Holly,’ she said as she reached the bottom step. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘I know there’s something wrong,’ Holly said doggedly.
‘Look.’ Tasha put the bag down with a thump. ‘Don’t think I don’t understand. I do. You’ve always been a little bit clingy where Ben was concerned, haven’t you?’ Then, before Holly could open her mouth to give her a blistering put down: ‘Oh I understand why. I know about losing your parents and all that, and I don’t mind. Really.’ She gave Holly a little, patronising smile as though she had given Ben full permission to pander to his neurotic sister’s neediness. ‘But this has all happened before, hasn’t it? There was that time when you thought Ben had disappeared and he’d simply gone off for a weekend with his mates.’
Holly’s face flamed. ‘That was years ago and it was totally different!’
Tasha shrugged. ‘Whatever. The truth is you have a rather idealistic view of your big brother and you worry about him rather a lot. My advice would be to calm down. Like I say, he’ll turn up in a few days.’ She glanced around the living room. ‘Send on anything I’ve missed, won’t you,’ she said.
Holly took a deep breath and counted to ten. Then she surreptitiously slid Ben’s phone into her back pocket.
‘Of course I will,’ she said.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_b060f553-b4a0-5426-851e-631c8296cb83)
The mill was as quiet as a sepulchre after Tasha and Flo had gone. The silence was so loud it hurt Holly’s ears. It was three thirty and she felt unbearably weary, but restless at the same time. Time felt irrelevant, suspended. She found she was waiting for her phone to ring or for a knock at the door, or for the sound of a voice, something, anything, that might herald Ben’s return.
She took her phone and went outside to try to get a better signal. She rang Guy’s mobile number but there was no reply. She could not get him on their landline either. He had not called her to find out what had happened or make sure she was OK. The knowledge that he didn’t care seemed unable to hurt her. Nothing penetrated the numbness and isolation that wrapped around her like a shroud.
She thought about ringing her grandparents but she didn’t want to worry them about nothing. She knew that if Ben had been with them he would have been in touch long before now. It was such a strange, frustrating, suspended place in which to find herself, one minute eaten up by worry, the next so furious with her brother she wanted to scream at him. In the end, since no one else seemed to be doing anything she thought the best thing she could do would be to go out and search the woods herself. She needed to be out in the fresh air again. She needed to be active. Claustrophobia pressed down on her. She felt sick. She pulled on her thin fleece jacket and went out, leaving Bonnie, who seemed disinclined for yet another walk, snoring on the sofa.
It was a bright day with a clear blue sky. Holly didn’t really know where to start so she set off down the track to the village, turning right over the bridge, past a bus stop where a girl stood, her long blonde hair blowing in the wind. She looked to be about nineteen, tall, too thin, wrapped in a long stripy scarf, smoking a cigarette and looking bored. She turned her head briefly as Holly walked past and nodded a hello, then dropped the cigarette and ground it out beneath her shoe.
The crumbling estate wall rose on Holly’s left and behind it was the old coach yard. This was where the majority of the building work was taking place, and Holly could hear the whine and bleep of a mechanical digger.
A hundred yards further on was the car park and courtyard where Fran had her deli café and tearoom. A dozen cars were parked in the cobbled yard and an ice cream sign swung by the shop door. Holly thought about dropping in but then she remembered Fran wasn’t back until the morning. She felt odd and disoriented. She had already been into the deli once that day, only a few hours ago, and yet it felt like it had happened weeks ago. She was so tired.
There was a small flyer on the telegraph pole by the side of the road. A dog named Lucky had gone missing and his owners were offering a reward for his safe return. Looking at the sad little furry face, Holly thought she could make up posters of Ben and stick them up about the place. It might jog the memories of people who could have seen him out and about in the woods. After all, he could have gone out for some fresh air and felt ill, or fallen over and knocked himself unconscious, or any number of other accidents. He could have a broken ankle and be unable to hop home. She knew the police had said they had searched the woods in the close vicinity but she suspected it had been a cursory search at best.
Although the sun was warm she felt cold. It took her aback to find the place so busy with bank holiday tourists. For some reason she had expected it to be quiet. She strolled along the path towards the wood, following several groups of visitors, families with children dragging their heels, couples hand in hand. Holly saw them all as though she was looking through one of her pieces of engraved glass, clear but slightly distorted. They ambled with no intent, admiring the view over the Downs where the weathercock pierced the sky and the dreamy curve of the hills broadened to fill the horizon. Holly felt shockingly lonely.
Her phone rang.
‘Hol?’ It was Guy. He sounded hung over. ‘What’s going on? Why the seven thousand calls? What gives?’
‘Ben’s still missing,’ Holly said bluntly. ‘He hasn’t come back since last night.’
‘What?’ Guy sounded puzzled, affronted even. ‘Well where is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ Holly said. ‘That’s the point. No one knows. Tasha says—’ She stopped abruptly but it was too late.
‘He’s got another woman,’ Guy finished. There was glee in his tone. ‘Good for him.’
‘I’m sure she’s wrong,’ Holly said.
Guy ignored that. ‘Are you heading back then?’ He said. ‘If Tasha’s been to pick up the kid—’
‘No,’ Holly said. ‘I’m staying here until Ben turns up.’
There was a silence. ‘What?’ Guy said. ‘Why on earth would you want to hang around?’
‘In case something’s happened to him,’ Holly said. ‘I wondered if you wanted to come down?’ She could hear the plea in her voice and hated herself for it. Whatever Tasha had said, she wasn’t normally so needy, but today it felt as though all her defences had been stripped away. It wasn’t that she particularly wanted Guy, she realised, just company and comfort. She wanted to share the burden of Ben’s disappearance. It was horrible feeling so alone.
She thought she heard Guy swear. ‘Hol,’ he said. ‘You’re over-reacting. Your brother’s not a child. He can take care of himself. For God’s sake come back—’
‘I’m worried,’ Holly said flatly. ‘I know something isn’t right.’
This time Guy definitely did swear. ‘For fuck’s sake, Holly! You’re not his keeper!’
‘Forget it,’ Holly said swiftly. ‘Forget I asked you to come down. And don’t expect me back either.’ She snapped the phone shut, cutting off Guy’s spluttering.
The brief flash of anger had lifted her spirits but they fell again immediately. She felt lost as soon as she stepped into the woods. The canopy of trees closed overhead, shutting her into green darkness. In all directions paths veered off and criss-crossed, losing themselves. She went two hundred yards along one and stopped, realising that she hadn’t even put her walking boots on. She felt tears of frustration and anger well up in her throat. She made her way back down to the road feeling shaky and upset.
What was she trying to do? She was one person trying to prove a point in the face of what seemed like massive indifference. No one else seemed to think that there was anything wrong and it was frightening to be wavering on the edge of believing it herself, thinking she was mad or deluded.
A wedding had just finished at the church by the little stone bridge. As the clock on the tower struck quarter to four, the church door opened and the wedding party spilled out into the churchyard, laughing and talking. Holly paused by the gate. A sudden breeze was plastering the bride’s veil against her lipstick and snatching at the guests’ coats like a demanding child. It picked up the confetti and whirled it around Holly’s head like blossom, and it tugged the bouquet from the bride’s hands, bowling it along the ground to land at Holly’s feet.
Holly bent slowly to pick it up. It was a posy of pink rosebuds, scentless.
Suddenly the wedding guests were all around her and the bride had come hurrying down the flagstone path towards her, laughing.
‘Thank you so much! I don’t know what I’d have done for the photographs otherwise!’
Holly handed the bouquet over, smiling. Her face felt a little stiff, as though it would not bend in the right places. No one seemed to have noticed though. They were all wrapped up in happiness. They didn’t know how out of touch she felt, how cut off. They went back towards the church door, where the photographer tried to arrange them in the neat rows required for the official pictures. At the same time she was aware of a sharp pain lodged beneath her breastbone. She did not begrudge these people their happiness but it made her loneliness feel suddenly unbearably acute.
‘Are you OK?’
Holly blinked. She was not the only onlooker. A man was standing to the side of the lych gate. Youngish, thirty-two or three – she was bad at guessing ages. She felt a flash of recognition, sharp and sure, as though she knew him, but as he came closer she realised that he was a stranger.
He was tall, dark and durable looking in a battered jacket, brown moleskin trousers and boots. His eyes were very dark, as dark as the hair that fell across his brow. An expensive-looking camera hung about his neck. Holly thought he was probably a tourist, out walking in the woods and attracted by the wedding as she had been. She forced a smile.
‘I’m fine, thanks. I just stopped to watch.’
He smiled back, but his dark gaze was keen. ‘If you’re sure? You look a bit … shaken.’
Behind them the group was re-arranging itself for yet another photograph. Holly put her hands in the pockets of the fleece and turned away.
‘Don’t let me stop you taking your pictures—’
The man grinned, obviously recognising the brush-off. ‘The sun’s in the wrong place. Besides, it’s too organised for me. I like spontaneity.’
Holly frowned a little. ‘Spontaneity. Yes. That’s nice. Excuse me …’
She had only gone twenty yards from him when she had to slow down because the tears were running down her face and dropping off her chin, and she couldn’t see where she was going. She felt bewildered and acutely embarrassed. She stumbled a little on the path, heard a step behind her, and felt his hand on her arm.
‘Look, can I help—’
‘No!’ Holly turned and glared at him and his hand dropped to his side. He took a step back.
‘Okay.’ His voice was quiet, oddly soothing. ‘Well … Take care—’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ A shred of conventional manners stirred in Holly and she scrubbed her hands across her face, wiping away the tears. ‘I really didn’t mean to be rude—’
His lips twitched as though he were about to smile. He had a striking face, thin and brown, with high cheekbones and dark, watchful eyes beneath strongly marked brows. Holly found she wanted to go on looking at him.
‘Please don’t apologise,’ he said easily. ‘I’m the one making a nuisance of myself—’
Holly started to cry again. ‘Don’t be so nice about it—’
‘Look, this is silly. Why don’t we go and get a cup of tea until you feel a bit better? There’s a tea room just down the road, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, but—’ Holly felt horribly vulnerable. She didn’t want anyone to see her looking like this. But they were already at the courtyard and he was guiding her to one of the outside tables where she could sit in a corner, partially sheltered from view.
Holly sat down and watched as he went inside, to emerge a few minutes later, carrying two big blue and white striped mugs. The steam from them floated sideways. She wrapped her hands around hers and drank deeply. It was scalding hot, but comforting.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘What do I owe you?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘In case you don’t take tea with complete strangers, my name’s Mark.’
‘Holly.’ She considered shaking hands and decided against it.
‘Nice to meet you, Holly.’ Mark sat back in his chair. ‘So do you want to talk about it?’
‘What?’ She stared at him, confused for a moment. Her eyes were smarting slightly. ‘Oh, no, thank you.’
‘All right.’ Mark said equably.
They sat drinking their tea in silence. Holly appraised him with an artist’s eye; his face was hard lines of cheek and jaw, like a stylised angel … He turned his head and their eyes met and again she felt that jolt of recognition, exciting, dangerous. Normally she would have run a mile from such instant attraction but today she felt different. Everything felt different.
She nodded towards the camera.
‘That’s a nice piece of kit. Did you get any good shots today?’
Mark smiled. ‘Yes, thanks. There’s plenty of potential around here. Are you interested in photography?’
‘Yes, I like it. I take pictures and sometimes I’m lucky. That’s different from being good though.’
Mark inclined his head. ‘So what do you do for a living?’
‘I’m an engraver. Glass.’ Holly realised she didn’t want to talk about herself. ‘What about you? Is photography your job?’
Mark grimaced. ‘Unfortunately not. I’m just an amateur. I used to work as a civil engineer, but I’ve done some travelling lately.’
Holly drained her mug. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘I was working in Asia for a bit, Norway. My sister lives there, so I stayed for the winter, crewing her husband’s fishing boat.’
Holly looked at him in surprise. She had seen enough TV programmes to know that was no job for amateurs.
‘Are you a good sailor then?’
‘No,’ Mark smiled. ‘A very bad one. But I had to do something to pay my way.’ He stood up, a little abruptly and Holly sensed that with him too there were barriers he didn’t want to cross.
‘Are you ready to go? I’ll walk you to your car.’
‘Oh.’ Holly realised he thought she was a tourist too. She hesitated, suddenly aware of how weird she felt. Everything felt odd, distorted in her mind, not quite real.
‘I’m staying near here,’ she said.
‘I’ll walk you back then.’
Holly was not sure that she really wanted company. ‘There’s no need—’
Mark slanted a smile down at her. She liked the lines that fanned out from his eyes when he smiled and the crease that ran down his cheek. She noticed these things about him quite objectively and yet at the same time not objectively at all.
‘I daresay you’d rather be alone,’ he said, ‘but I’d rather know you were OK. Call me over-protective if you like …’ He shrugged. ‘I could walk a few paces behind, if you prefer.’
The breeze was strengthening now and the day cooling down into evening. They left the car park and the tourists behind, passing the tiny village green with its scatter of cottages and the little stream. After all the noise and bustle the silence sounded loud. They did not speak.
Whenever Mark drew a little ahead of her, Holly watched him move; the easy, economical movements of someone comfortable in their own skin. His gaze was abstracted now as it rested on the path ahead, his face a little distant in repose. There was a tight knot in Holly’s stomach as she watched him. It felt a little like pain, but it was something different, hot and fierce, that curled inside her.
At the gate of the mill she stopped. Mark looked up and seemed to register for the first time where they were. He turned towards her, frowning.
‘Are you staying here?’
‘Yes,’ Holly said. ‘Would you like to come in?’
She felt his puzzlement, saw the slight narrowing of his eyes as they rested on her face. Much now depended on his interpretation of the invitation, and she had the feeling that Mark had probably had plenty of practice in that. She shifted slightly, keeping her gaze fixed on his. He was so cool, so distant. She needed to bridge that gap. She needed him. The thought of him turning away now and leaving her was unbearable. She wondered if he could feel her desperation.
He took her hand. His fingers interlocked strongly with hers, and still she did not know the answer and felt quite faint with the need to know. She stepped over the threshold and gently tugged his hand; he followed.
There was a message from Fran on the mat. It said: ‘I’ve just got back. Call me.’
Holly read it upside down, stepped over it and turned back to Mark. She could smell his skin, the faint scent of fresh air. He was cold to the touch. She pulled him inside, slammed the door and reached up to kiss him. After a second he responded and she felt sharp desire and such relief that she trembled. The loneliness, the fear, faded.
She kissed him again, driving out thought, losing herself in sensation, drawing back only so that she could lead him towards the stairs. She could feel his presence behind her, close as a whisper. She was still holding his hand. The late afternoon sun was streaming in at the big bedroom window, , the line of the hills spread out before them. Mark was watching her face.
‘Holly, what’s this about?’
She felt his breath feather across her skin. She could see the shadow of his eyelashes, spiky against the hard line of his cheek. His lips brushed her jaw. Again she felt that fierce rush of desire. She turned her head and Mark’s mouth was suddenly on hers again, one hand tangled in her hair, the other low on her back. Sensation flared. Mark’s hand brushed the thin cotton of her shirt, his palm against her breast. He was still kissing her. Such urgency. She had never even imagined it could be like that and she was fiercely glad; glad she was not alone any more; glad she could forget for a little while. She pulled him down onto the bed beside her and lost herself in him.
There was a distant ringing sound in Holly’s ears. She struggled awake to find the room full of daylight. Her body felt relaxed for the first time in days and her mind was as clear and sharp as a cut in a piece of glass. She could remember every detail of the night. They hadn’t slept much. They hadn’t talked at all.
She turned over. Mark lay beside her, curled on his side, sleeping peacefully. The lines of his face were softened. Something pierced Holly’s detachment and made her breath catch in her throat. She looked at him for a moment, then got out of bed and tiptoed over to the wardrobe. She almost tripped over the clothes piled on the floor. Turning the key in the door she took out an old paisley robe of Ben’s she had borrowed the last time she had come down.
Light was streaming into the long living room and her phone was full of messages. She ignored them. It was the doorbell that was ringing, on and on. Bonnie was agitated, waiting by the door, tail waving. All Holly could think was that if Ben had timed his arrival back now it would be difficult to work out which of them had the more explaining to do.
She opened the door and found Fran on the step, shivering inside her jacket. It was another sunny morning but they were standing in the shade of the building and the shadows were cold.
‘Holly!’ Fran’s eyes were puzzled, her voice full of concern. ‘Thank goodness! I thought you’d disappeared too. Are you ill or something? I heard about Ben—’
‘You already know?’ Holly blinked in shock.
‘The whole village knows,’ Fran said. ‘You can’t keep secrets around here.’ She bit her lip. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I caused a problem for you but when I couldn’t get you last night I called your grandparents. I thought perhaps you might have gone over to Oxford. Oh, and I rang Guy as well. What the hell happened there? He told me you had broken your engagement—’
Normally Holly could cope with Fran’s ramblings but this morning her head hurt. ‘You rang Gran?’ She felt a sick, swooping sensation in her chest. She could not imagine how Hester and John had felt to hear that Ben had vanished and that Fran couldn’t get hold of Holly either. No wonder she had hundreds of messages on her phone. She was surprised they weren’t there, hammering on the door.
Fran’s gaze dropped to her note, still resting on the mat at the bottom of the steps. She frowned. ‘Didn’t you see my message? We’ve been worried about you.’
Holly drew her robe more closely about her throat. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll ring Gran straight away and let her know I’m OK.’
Fran was watching her as though she knew there was something wrong but could not quite work it out. ‘Are you feeling ill? Has it all been too much for you? I’m so, so sorry about Ben. Has there been no word? I just don’t understand it. It’s not like him.’
There was a sound upstairs. Fran started to say something else but Holly spoke quickly.
‘I’d better go and get dressed. I’m really sorry, Fran. I’m feeling a bit weird about it all to be honest. I’ll come and seem you later.’
Fran huddled deeper in her jacket. ‘You poor thing! No wonder you haven’t got up yet. Look, do you want me to come in and make you a cup of coffee? We could talk—’
There was another sound from upstairs, too loud to ignore. Fran frowned. ‘Holly, is somebody here already? What’s going on?’
Holly shivered. ‘Sorry, Fran, it’s not really convenient to talk right now.’
‘Has Ben come back?’ Fran demanded.
‘No,’ Holly said.
‘Then did Guy come down after all? Because last night he said—’
‘No,’ Holly said again.
She saw the moment that the penny dropped in Fran’s mind, the widening of her eyes, the look of comical shock on her face. Fran clapped a hand to her mouth. Her gaze roved over Holly’s tumbled hair, her bare feet. ‘Oh Holly,’ she said, ‘What have you done – Oh my God, you haven’t … Say you haven’t. What’s happened to you? You never do things like that!’
Holly caught her arm urgently. ‘I can’t talk now. Please, Fran, it’s a bit complicated.’
Fran looked torn between stunned horror and concern. ‘Holly, you’re in shock. I’ve read about this. When people go missing their relatives can suffer from something called suspended grief, not knowing whether someone is dead or not—’
‘Thanks, Fran,’ Holly said. Despite herself she could feel a flicker of a smile starting and some sense of normality returning. Fran’s monumental lack of tact had always been cheering rather than anything else. ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ she said. ‘Really, I will. I’ve got things to sort out.’
‘I can imagine,’ Fran said dryly. Then she looked past Holly’s shoulder. Holly saw her expression freeze before Fran rearranged her face into ultra-casual indifference.
‘Mark,’ she said brightly. ‘Hi. How are you?’
Holly spun around. Mark, fully dressed, was standing in the doorway. He nodded to Fran.
‘Hi, Fran.’
Holly felt her stomach dip as though she were on a roller coaster. The previous day she hadn’t spared a single thought for who Mark was or what he was doing at Ashdown. Now, though, she realised that far from being a random tourist who would disappear in the morning, he must live there and would be going precisely nowhere. Her stomach tightened and panic fluttered in her throat.
‘You’ve heard about Ben?’ Fran had waited for Holly to speak and then, when she hadn’t, had rushed in to fill the awkward silence as best she could.
‘Just now,’ Mark said. His gaze was on Holly’s face, dark and inscrutable. ‘What happened?’
‘He’s missing,’ Holly said. ‘He vanished a couple of nights ago.’ It felt ridiculous, surreal, to be standing here like this politely discussing her brother’s disappearance when she had neglected to mention it before.
‘Holly didn’t tell you—’ Fran began, then saw the expression on Holly’s face and gulped. ‘Well, anyway, I’d better …’ She waved her hands about in mute confusion. ‘I’ll be at home later so give me a ring, Holly … Or call round. Whatever.’ She was edging away down the path as she spoke. ‘Take care.’
She hurried off towards the gate and Holly went back inside. Mark stepped back to allow her to pass him. She could feel his gaze on her face and she felt the heat burn beneath her skin. Suddenly the paisley robe felt far too flimsy and she felt far too vulnerable.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, before Mark had the chance to say anything and the situation became even more excruciating. ‘I should have told you, but …’ She stopped. She had no excuses. She couldn’t even connect with how she had felt the day before, how isolated, how desperate she had been not to be alone.
‘That’s OK,’ Mark said. His tone was level but she had an unnerving conviction that he was angry. ‘I knew you were upset, I just didn’t realise—’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry to hear about Ben,’ he added. ‘Are the police looking for him?’
‘No,’ Holly said. ‘They think he’s just gone off somewhere and that he’ll turn up.’ Her eyes were burning and it felt as though something sharp was wedged in her throat. She could not believe how right everything had felt whilst she had been with Mark and how wrong it all felt again now. That was the trouble with forgetting, she thought. It didn’t last long before everything crowded back in worse than before. She should have realised; realised she couldn’t lose herself, realised she couldn’t escape her fears about Ben.
‘I wouldn’t want you to think …’ She stopped. Mark waited. She felt a spurt of anger that he wasn’t making it easy for her.
‘I didn’t mean to use you,’ she said. ‘I don’t usually do this sort of thing.’
Mark shrugged. ‘I heard what Fran said.’ He picked up his jacket off the back of the sofa. ‘Just for the record, neither do I. Except that we both did.’
There was another sharp silence then Mark sighed.
‘I don’t want to leave you if you’re upset,’ he said. ‘Holly, please, talk to me.’
The look in his eyes was gentle and it made Holly feel more angry. She remembered his tenderness the previous night and how she had driven it out with need. She didn’t want it now, either. She couldn’t deal with it.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. She drew the robe tight about her throat. ‘Thanks.’
‘Right,’ Mark said. He reached for the latch pausing for a second as he was about to open the door. ‘It might help to know,’ he said, ‘who you are …’
‘Oh!’ Holly jumped, the colour flooding her face again. ‘Holly Ansell. Ben’s sister.’
‘And who is Guy?’
Holly hesitated a second. ‘Guy is … was … my fiancé.’
She saw Mark’s expression harden. ‘Okay. I get it. Well, I’ll go then.’
Holly didn’t try to stop him. She heard the door slam behind him and felt the silence of the house press in on her. She fumbled on the dresser for her phone. She needed to ring her grandmother. Guilt swamped her. Everything else could wait. She didn’t need to think about it now.
She pressed the button to call her grandparents’ number. Hester answered on the second ring.
‘Gran,’ Holly said. ‘I’m so sorry not to have called before—’ And submitted quietly to her grandmother’s scolding, hearing the fear beneath her words of reproach.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_3e4665b7-832b-56ae-8d0e-e73811413809)
Wassenaer Hof, The Hague, February 1632
The palace was in chaos. Light spilled across the cobbles, torches flared, men hurrying, women calling with an edge of panic to their voices. As William Craven rode through the arched gateway into the courtyard, Dr Rumph, the Queen’s chief physician, loomed up out of the dark and caught his reins, causing the horse to shy. Cursing, Craven brought it under control and Rumph stepped back, his long face growing even longer.
‘Your pardon.’ He spoke stiffly.
‘It’s no matter,’ Craven said. He jumped down and handed the reins over to a groom. It had been a long ride from Frederick’s campaign lodgings at Hanau and he had letters for the Queen but what he wanted most was a meal and some hot water. Judging by the disquiet in Rumph’s face, however, he seemed destined to have neither.
‘What can I do for you, doctor?’ he said.
‘We have lost the Queen!’ Rumph said.
For one shocking moment Craven thought Rumph meant that Elizabeth was dead. It would not be so surprising. The winter had been notably wet and mild, encouraging all manner of fevers, and the Queen had been taken with an ague that had confined her to her bed for several weeks. But then he realised what the doctor meant. The chaos, the men milling around, the air of panicked confusion …
‘Her Majesty has disappeared?’ he said.
‘That is what I’m telling you,’ Rumph snapped.
‘You have searched the palace?’
‘Of course.’ Rumph fell into step beside him, his long black robe flapping agitatedly as he walked. ‘She was last seen in her chamber several hours ago. Her ladies say she was in a melancholy frame of mind. We were afraid …’ He hesitated. No one would articulate it but they feared that the Queen, borne down by fear and loneliness whilst her husband was on campaign, might commit the heinous sin of taking her own life.
‘Nonsense,’ Craven said. It was easy in such a febrile atmosphere to imagine the worst. Rumour spread panic like a contagion. Yet he knew that the Queen would never abandon her cause.
He had left The Hague with Frederick six weeks before and they had made slow progress towards a meeting with the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus at Hochst. During that time Craven had taken a number of letters back and forth between the king and his wife. It had not taken him long to see which of them had the greater heart, spirit and stomach for the fight. Frederick would always be a broken reed. Elizabeth would always be the stronger.
‘Have you searched the gardens?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ Rumph sounded offended to be asked so obvious a question.
‘Stables? Outbuildings?’
Rumph’s look said quite clearly what he thought of the idea of the Queen of Bohemia hiding in an outbuilding.
‘Our Lord took refuge in a stable,’ Craven said mildly, and was rewarded with a glare.
‘You mock the scriptures, my lord?’
‘Of course not,’ Craven said. ‘What about the water tower? Have you looked there?’
There was a pause, a minute hesitation. Craven glanced at the physician. Rumph knew full well what ceremonies had been held in the water tower and disapproved of them. Or perhaps, Craven thought, he was superstitious, scared. Physicians sometimes were. Rumph would not like to think that the Queen would dabble in dangerous occult practices. If it came to it, Craven felt much the same himself, although for different reasons. He deplored the use of magic.
‘The tower is locked,’ the physician said.
‘But the queen would have access to a key.’
Silence.
‘We have not looked there,’ Rumph admitted.
‘Then let us waste no more time.’
By the time they had crossed the garden to the tower they had gained a motley retinue; pages with lanterns, ladies holding up their skirts in order not to dirty them on the gravel, gentlemen with hunting dogs. Craven put his hand to the door of the tower and it swung open silently. He took a torch from one of the servants.
‘I’ll go down alone,’ he said.
The faces around him swam in the flare of light; avid, speculative, malicious. Craven felt a wave of disgust. God protect Her Majesty from such ghoulish curiosity. It was no wonder she sought solitude, surrounded every moment by such a crowd.
Rumph blocked his way. ‘It would not be seemly for you to be alone with the Queen, my lord.’
‘Forgive me, doctor, but His Majesty the King insists no layman should enter the tower that holds the secrets of the Order of the Rosy Cross,’ Craven said, an edge of steel to his tone now. ‘Does anyone wish to gainsay him?’ He let the question hang.
It was enough. A ripple of disquiet went through the crowd like wind through corn. No one wanted to incur the wrath of the Knights of the Rosy Cross. Only Rumph’s face bore indecision.
‘I must insist—’
‘Be assured, sir—’ Craven laid a hand lightly on his arm, ‘that I will call for you at once should Her Majesty be in need of medical assistance.’
He started down the stone stair. There was absolute silence below and darkness that fell about him like a shroud. The air was still and musty. It made him want to sneeze. He could almost feel the layers of dust tightening his chest. This was an unwholesome place. Even if a man did not believe in necromancy and its secrets it was impossible not to feel a shudder of repulsion.
‘Your Majesty!’ His voice sounded loud, met by nothing but the muffling darkness. He reached the bottom of the stairs and carefully opened the door into the water chamber.
There were no knights in black and gold tonight. At first Craven thought the room was completely empty and he felt a rush of relief mingled with respect for Elizabeth that she should not cheapen herself with foolish superstition. Then he saw the torchlight falling on the quiet waters of the pool in banners of orange and black. It glanced off the arched spans of the roof and the tall pillars of stone. Shadows rippled, then one of them formed into a figure, small, slight, kneeling at the side of the pool.
Craven’s heart jumped. He almost dropped the lantern in his haste to reach her side. ‘Your Majesty!’
She made no response, no movement.
‘Madam!’ He dropped down on one knee beside her. He had never thought her a small woman before, yet she seemed as insubstantial as air tonight, a ghost in a white gown, huddled over the water as she wove her spell.
He saw it then, the pearl shimmering on a ledge at the edge of the pool. He felt a deep visceral coldness, as though the marrow were freezing in his bones. It was not fear he felt but anger. Frederick was weak and needed the magic of soothsaying to prop him up. He was its puppet. But Elizabeth should have been too strong to require the comfort of such illusions.
He snatched the pearl from the water and threw it aside. He heard the clatter as it bounced off the stone pillar and wondered if it was lost. He hoped so.
Elizabeth jumped to her feet and spun to confront him. ‘You forget yourself, Craven.’ Her voice cracked like a whip. Her skirts were soaked. Water gleamed on her bare arms. She looked like a creature of magic herself, all light and fire, her hair flowing loose about her shoulders. He had never seen her like this, never expected to see her like this.
‘Who are you to interrupt the mysteries of the Knights of the Rosy Cross?’ Elizabeth demanded.
‘One who would not see you bend to superstition,’ Craven said grimly, adding a perfunctory ‘madam.’ It sounded more derisive than he had intended and he saw her expression harden. For a moment he thought she might strike him.
‘Be careful that you do not trip over your own self-importance,’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘Why should I care about your judgement, milord? You have no education. You are no more than a soldier. I do not need your permission or your approval for what I do.’
‘All men’s opinions matter when a kingdom is at stake,’ Craven said. ‘Do you want the world to think that you cast spells like a witch because you do not believe you will regain your patrimony any other way?’ He straightened up. A glimmer of iridescence caught his eye; in the corner of the chamber the pearl gleamed mockingly. Elizabeth made a rush for it but Craven was before her, grabbing it, holding it out of her reach. As soon as he touched it all colour seemed to leach from it. It looked a dull grey, sulky and malevolent. It was a toy, a chimera. He detested it.
He raised his gaze to Elizabeth’s face. ‘If you call on the pearl they will think you weak,’ he said softly. ‘They will dismiss you as a tool in the hands of the magicians. Or they will seek to burn you for witchcraft.’
Shock flared in her eyes. He had spoken harshly on purpose because he wanted her to understand. The Holy Roman Emperor and his allies would use every means available to discredit her. She was putting herself in danger and suddenly he was fearful for her.
He could feel the tension wrapping about them, thick as cobwebs, and then Elizabeth gave a sigh and her shoulders slumped. She looked so young and vulnerable all of a sudden, fragile in the white gown. The torchlight cast its slanting shade across her cheek and deepened the warm curve of her mouth. Her blue eyes were shadowed and dark. In that instant Craven could see why hard-headed soldiers and romantic fools alike dedicated themselves and their swords to her service. She was both gallant and beautiful.
Craven remembered Ralph Hopton telling him once of how he had carried the pregnant Queen ahead of him on his horse during the retreat from Prague after the Battle of White Mountain, of how she had ridden mile after mile without complaint whilst her husband had shed bitter tears over the loss of his kingdom. Such courage commanded men’s respect as well as their love.
‘Don’t you see – I need certainty?’ He could hear the plea for reassurance beneath Elizabeth’s defiant words. ‘I need to know if Frederick will win,’ she said. ‘I need to know if our lands will be restored or whether …’ She let the words trail away before she betrayed herself too far.
‘You will not find truth in magic, only deception.’ Impatience made him short. Frederick would not win. Craven needed no soothsaying to tell him that. He wanted to be honest with her, to state the facts baldly:
‘Your husband is no soldier and men will die because of him.’
But that was needlessly cruel, and in making her face up to her lack of belief in her husband he would commit an unforgivable act of treachery. Besides, he had chosen his loyalty. He had pledged himself to Frederick’s cause. The least he could do was honour that pledge until he was released from it.
‘Frederick took the mirror with him.’ She spoke softly so that Craven had to draw nearer to hear her words. A fold of her gown brushed his leg. For a moment he smelled the scent of the orange flower perfume she wore. She glanced up at him, almost shy. ‘We agreed; he would have the mirror and I the pearl. Two halves of a whole.’ Her voice dropped still further. ‘They do not work so well apart. The pearl would not reveal itself tonight without the mirror as its foil.’
Craven knew the Winter King had taken the mirror. Barely a day passed without him peering into its depths for some pointer to his future fortunes. It was pitiful. He clenched his fists and, in doing so, realised that he still held the pearl. He resisted the urge to throw it into the pool and let the waters of the Bosbeek wash it away.
There were sounds from above now, footsteps on the stone stairs and the flaring of torches. Clearly Rumph had decided he had been absent long enough and had come to find out what was happening.
‘They are looking for me.’ He saw Elizabeth straighten. She reached for her cloak, smothering the white gown in darkness. Her tone had changed. The doubt, the desolation had gone. She had shown her weakness to him but now she was a queen again.
Her gaze fixed on him, formal now. ‘I did not ask what you were doing here, Lord Craven. I suppose you are come from Hanau with letters from His Majesty?’
‘I am.’ He was put neatly back in his place, a messenger boy.
‘Then present them to me in an hour in the Great Chamber.’
She held out her hand for the jewel.
Craven looked at it again. It was instinctive, that glance downwards. He expected to see nothing but a big fat pearl that should have been locked away, or reduced to what it truly was; no more than an insignificant part of a royal collection of jewels. Yet in that second, as he stared at it, the pearl was transformed. It glowed, radiating a soft light that should have been warm and yet felt as cold as the winter sea. The surface shifted like clouds covering the moon and then he saw. A bedchamber cloaked in death, the royal standard of the lion rampant hanging limp and still. He could feel the heat of the room and smell the stench of sickness. He could hear the voices of the attendants and the murmurings of a priest.
‘Craven?’ Elizabeth’s voice called him back. He shuddered, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. The pearl burned his palm. He handed it gently to her.
‘What did you see?’ she asked. As she took it from him their fingers touched.
‘I saw nothing,’ Craven lied. ‘Nothing at all.’
Chapter 6 (#ulink_e5e269d3-291a-54a2-9183-07c6a866521a)
When Holly reached the Ashmolean Museum that evening she found huge posters flanking the entrance, proclaiming the forthcoming exhibition of artefacts from the Court of Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen. It was, the poster proclaimed, an extraordinary showcase for an outstanding collection of the finest seventeenth-century glass, china, and portraiture.
The curator on duty at the door was reluctant to let Holly in until she mentioned her name and that she was meeting Mr Shurmer, whereupon he stood back with what was almost a bow and directed her to the second floor. The door of the lecture room stood wide; Holly could see the detritus of canapés and empty wine glasses strewn about. The guests were still chatting, however, and the roar of conversation was like a wall of noise.
She didn’t want to go in, to engage in conversation, to try to find Espen Shurmer in the crowd. Instead she turned away and immediately felt the shock of quietness fall about her. The roar of voices faded. There was nothing but the faint tap of her footsteps and beyond the floor to ceiling windows at the end of the corridor, the tumble of Oxford roofs, spires and towers and the glitter of the city lights.
Holly loved Oxford. She had grown up in the city and she loved the crackle of excitement, the same sense of opportunity in the air that she felt in London. It felt like a city of limitless possibilities as well as a place steeped in history. Tonight though it just felt lonely and the bright white walls and bare spaces of the museum made it all the more stark.
At the end of the corridor a thick red rope now blocked the entrance to the exhibition. Holly had been to similar events in London and knew that earlier in the evening, all the guests would have wandered through, exchanging professional opinions on the rarity and quality of the collection. Now the gallery was empty and she could see the gleam of glass in the display cases. It beckoned to her, forbidden, tempting. She slipped past the rope and went in, ignoring the portraits and the other objects, concentrating solely on the engraved glass.
As always when she saw such exquisite workmanship Holly felt her heart quicken. This was the long tradition she worked within. She had wanted to be a glass engraver almost from the moment she had started to study the decorative arts. Here she was looking at masterpieces of her craft. There were slender wine flutes in the Venetian style and fat goblets engraved with scenes from Dutch life. There were glasses shaped like inverted bells with stems of twisted spirals and broad bowls embellished with flowers.
A stunning floor-length picture of the Winter Queen dominated the far wall and seeing it, Holly felt a tug of memory. Her grandfather had told her stories of Elizabeth Stuart when she had been a little girl. Elizabeth had been a Scottish princess by birth and Holly, born in the North of England, had felt a sense of affinity with the child who had left behind her roots and travelled so far from home. The idea of a Winter Queen had caught her childish imagination; she had visualised Elizabeth spun from icicles, cold as snow, like the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia. But those stories had felt magical, unreal. Here was the story of Elizabeth’s life told through items she had touched and held.
Slowly now Holly walked between the display cases, taking in all the artefacts that she had previously ignored because she had been overwhelmed by the beauty of the glass. There were letters from Elizabeth to her husband Frederick of Bohemia, an astrolabe showing the celestial sphere with the earth at its centre, an engraved gold medal celebrating the couple’s marriage, a dagger enamelled and set with diamonds.
On a bed of blue velvet nestled two miniatures, one of Frederick and the other of Elizabeth. Leaning closer, Holly saw that the portraits had been painted in 1612, just before their marriage.
‘Miss Ansell? How do you do? I am Espen Shurmer.’
Holly jumped. Just for a moment she had forgotten that she had come to the Ashmolean to meet Espen Shurmer and talk about Ben.
Shurmer was standing on the other side of the display, hands in the pockets of his beautifully cut suit, smiling at her confusion with benevolent amusement. He stepped forwards and held out a hand.
‘Am I to assume that your presence here means that Dr Ansell has not returned?’ he asked. His English was almost accentless.
‘Mr Shurmer.’ Holly felt self-conscious and only just managed not to wipe her palms down her dress before she shook hands. ‘Yes, I’m afraid Ben is still missing.’
‘My sympathies,’ Shurmer said gravely. ‘I imagine that is very difficult for you.’
‘Thank you,’ Holly said. ‘Yes, it is a little difficult.’ She thought about her grandparents and the stoicism they were displaying in the absence of any news. When she had arrived earlier that afternoon, her grandmother had hugged her tightly for a long, long time as though she was afraid that Holly might vanish too. Her grandfather had told her he had spoken to the police and was trying to encourage them to open a formal investigation now that Ben had been gone over 48 hours without contact.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t make myself known to you when I arrived, Mr Shurmer,’ Holly said. ‘I …’ She hesitated. ‘I had an urge to see the exhibition.’
‘Of course.’ Shurmer smiled. ‘You are welcome.’ His eyes were a vivid blue. His face bore lines of humour and experience. It was impossible to guess his age although Holly thought he must be in his late sixties, or older. His English was slightly clipped and old-fashioned which only added to the charm.
‘Why would you not wish to see it?’ he said. ‘All these items are so very beautiful.’
‘Yes.’ Holly hesitated again. ‘I’m a glass engraver, you see, and these—’ She gestured towards the display cases, ‘well, I’ve never seen anything quite so stunning.’ She found that she had put out a hand towards the nearest cabinet as though wanting to touch the glass within. It was a rose-coloured goblet with a hunting scene engraved on it in gold foil. She knew it was called gold sandwich-glass and that it was so precious and expensive that it had probably been a gift and never actually used.
She saw Shurmer’s eyes widen momentarily in surprise. ‘A glass engraver,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, I see.’
‘It’s wonderful to see the glass in the context of other items from Frederick and Elizabeth’s court,’ Holly said. ‘On its own it is exquisite but seen alongside some of their other possessions it has so much more meaning. I can almost imagine stepping into the palace of the Wassenaer Hof and seeing the table set for a banquet …’ She tailed off, thinking she sounded impossibly naïve, but Shurmer’s shrewd blue gaze had sharpened with interest.
‘So you know about the Wassenaer Hof? About Elizabeth and Frederick’s court in exile?’
‘A little,’ Holly said. ‘I’ve been to The Hague but of course the palace has gone now. As for Elizabeth and Frederick, my grandfather told me about them when I was a child. He was a wonderful storyteller.’
‘The Winter Queen is not well known in this country,’ Shurmer said, ‘even though she was the daughter of King James I.’
‘She was known as the Pearl of Britain,’ Holly said. She looked at Elizabeth’s portrait. ‘She looks heartbreakingly lovely. So young as well.’
It was an unusual portrait, she thought. In it Elizabeth’s auburn hair was loose about her shoulders rather than piled up in some elaborate arrangement, and the long flowing tresses complemented the bold orange and black striped gown she wore. She was a true Scottish rose with creamy white skin and pale blue eyes.
‘As does Frederick,’ Shurmer said. Holly thought he sighed softly. ‘So young and eager. It is fortunate they did not know at that stage what was to come – betrayal, loss and exile.’
The Winter King looked no more than a boy, handsome and clean-shaven. His dark eyes were lustrous and his dark hair had a jaunty curl. Holly could see why he and Elizabeth had apparently fallen in love with each other on sight. Their good looks, hopes and expectations would have been a mirror each for the other. Everything must have seemed so wonderful in the beginning.
Then she remembered that Elizabeth had lost her brother only months before her marriage to Frederick. Even then there had been dark clouds. Unconsciously she wrapped her arms about her, warding off the darkness.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you did not invite me here to discuss this.’
Shurmer smiled. ‘On the contrary, Miss Ansell. In order to understand what it is that your brother wanted from me, it is necessary to know of the Winter Queen. But it seems that you already do.’ His gaze was intent, as though weighing up just how much she did know. ‘Has Dr Ansell already told you about his researches?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Holly said. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘So,’ Shurmer said. ‘Why did you decide to come?’
Holly did not answer immediately and he did not prompt her. There was a quality of patience, of stillness, about Espen Shurmer that was unusual, she thought. It felt as though he would always be prepared to wait as long as was needed to get what he wanted.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said honestly, after a moment. ‘I think I came because I thought it might have something to do with Ben’s disappearance, or at least help me to work out what has happened to him.’
Shurmer nodded slowly. ‘It is important to you to find him.’
‘Very,’ Holly said.
Silence fell again. She waited for Shurmer to say something reassuring. Almost everyone she had met in the past 48 hours had told her they were sure Ben would turn up soon. She knew it was intended to help, to make her feel better, even though it didn’t. But Espen Shurmer said nothing.
‘When we spoke you mentioned something about a pearl of great value,’ Holly said. ‘I must admit it surprised me. That really doesn’t sound like Ben. He’s not into antique jewellery or history of any sort, to be honest. He’s too—’ She paused. ‘He’s more about the present rather than the past.’
‘Indeed?’ A frown touched Espen Shurmer’s brow. ‘Yet he was researching your family history?’
‘I only heard about that recently,’ Holly said. ‘It seemed weird – totally out of character.’ She looked at him. ‘I’m astonished he told you about that too. Did it have something to do with his questions about the pearl?’
She saw a shadow of something flicker in Shurmer’s eyes. ‘Perhaps.’ His tone was non-committal. ‘I do not know. All I know is that Dr Ansell wanted me to tell him all I knew about the Sistrin.’
‘The Sistrin,’ Holly said, and as she said the name she felt something shift inside her like the faintest of echoes, as though she had heard the word before. ‘That is the name of the pearl,’ she said softly.
‘It is,’ Shurmer said. ‘But before I tell you about it, Miss Ansell, we must go back a little.’ He gestured to her to sit beside him on one of the museum’s wide leather benches. ‘You will humour an old man, I hope.’
It felt something of a royal edict. Holly sat.
Espen Shurmer waved a hand towards the cabinet that was closest to them. ‘You see the crystal mirror, here? What do you think of it?’
Holly followed his gaze. The same display case that held the rose-coloured engraved glass also held a number of other objects, but amongst all the gorgeously extravagant glassware they had been all but invisible to her. Now she saw them: a signet ring, a sapphire necklace set in dull gold, and a small mirror in a wooden frame that was studded with diamonds. It was shaped like a teardrop with a worn handle at the base. It was beautiful, a piece of workmanship so delicate it looked as though it would be too fragile to hold. The glass shone with a milky bluish radiance. Yet there was something about it that Holly did not like.
‘It’s a stunning piece of work,’ she said carefully.
‘It is Murano crystal,’ Shurmer said, ‘and was a gift to Mary, Queen of Scots when she wed Francois II of France. It is pretty, is it not?’
That was something of an understatement, Holly thought. The mirror was exquisite. Yet there was also something malevolent about it. She did not want to look into it though she was not exactly sure what it was about it that scared her.
‘Mary was Elizabeth’s grandmother, wasn’t she?’ she asked. ‘Did she bequeath it to her?’
The lines deepened about Shurmer’s eyes as he smiled. ‘After a fashion,’ he said. ‘It was stolen by Elizabeth I of England when she had Mary put to death. Later Elizabeth sent it back to Scotland as a christening gift for Elizabeth Stuart, who was her goddaughter. It was, however, something of a cursed gift.’
‘Cursed?’ Holly said. She didn’t believe in the supernatural. She had never liked things she could not explain: ghosts, the Loch Ness monster, even the placebo effect. Even so, she felt the goosebumps creep along the back of her neck.
‘The mirror became a tool for necromancy,’ Shurmer said. ‘Soothsaying,’ he added, in response to Holly’s enquiring glance. ‘After Frederick lost his throne he became obsessed with the need to know whether he would ever regain his patrimony. He was a member of the Order of Knights of the Rosy Cross. They were said to have the power of foretelling the future and they used the crystal mirror in their magic.’
‘I remember reading about the Knights of the Rosy Cross years ago,’ Holly said. ‘Some people thought them healers rather than magicians. And some said they were charlatans in league with the devil.’
‘Very good, Miss Ansell.’ Shurmer was nodding his approval. ‘The Knights of the Rosy Cross were many things to many men.’ Then as she smiled, he said: ‘Forgive me. I sound like a teacher, I know, but it is rare to meet someone who has heard of the Order of the Rosy Cross.’ He sighed. ‘Legend has it that the Knights used a number of tools in their scrying, but that the jewelled mirror was the most important because it had the power to reflect the future. It had been forged in fire, you see, and it was said that as from fire it had come, so into fire it would lead its enemies.’
Holly gave a little involuntary shiver. She found she did not want to look directly at the mirror now, but paradoxically it almost felt as though it was willing her to turn, beckoning her gaze. Very deliberately she shifted so that her back was towards it.
‘The mirror was said to have caused the death of Henry, Lord Darnley, in an explosion and fire,’ Shurmer said. ‘It was also rumoured to have foretold the Gunpowder Plot. On the very day of the Princess Elizabeth’s christening, her nurse saw a vision of hellfire and flame in the mirror and the child upon the throne of England.’
‘I know that the plotters planned to set Princess Elizabeth up as a puppet queen,’ Holly said, ‘but since the Gunpowder Plot didn’t actually succeed, technically it can’t be said that the mirror predicted the future.’
Shurmer’s eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘I see that you are a most logical person, Miss Ansell.’
‘I try to be,’ Holly said.
Shurmer’s smile deepened. ‘Then I doubt you will believe for a moment the tales of the Knights and their soothsaying,’ he said. ‘Or a mirror that can destroy its enemies through fire.’
‘It’s certainly a great story,’ Holly said. ‘How did the mirror come into your collection?’
‘That was by fortunate chance,’ Shurmer said. The bright white lights of the exhibition cases threw the shadows of his face into stark relief. Suddenly he looked frail, the skin stretched too taut across his cheekbones, his eyes tired.
‘For many years the mirror was missing,’ he said. ‘It was believed buried with Frederick, but Frederick’s tomb was lost during the Thirty Years War. Then the mirror miraculously reappeared in the late twentieth century at a car boot sale in Corby in Northamptonshire.’
Holly almost choked. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘but you do not strike me as the sort of man who spends his time attending car boot sales.’
Shurmer laughed. ‘What I should have said is that I was alerted to the fact that there was a very old, very fine mirror for sale. An … associate of mine bought it and mentioned it to me. He knew that I was interested in seventeenth-century artefacts, particularly those from the Bohemian court.’
‘I suppose it had no provenance?’ Holly said.
Shurmer shook his head. ‘Naturally not. But it matches the known descriptions and pictures of the Murano crystal mirror.’
‘Did you have it authenticated?’ Holly asked. It would be the natural thing to do; call in a group of experts to assess the mirror and confirm its age and origin. Yet Espen Shurmer was shaking his head again and she sensed that his belief in the mirror and its myth was so strong that either he believed it absolutely without the need for proof or he did not want to question it too closely in case he destroyed the legend.
Of course he might be right. It could indeed be the very mirror that the Winter King had used to foresee the future. Holly glanced at it again and felt the same disturbing pull. A breath of wind seemed to ripple through the still air of the gallery. The lights seemed to shimmer and the mirror glowed in its case as though it were alive. She shuddered, closing her eyes. When she reopened them the gallery swam back into her vision, all bright lights and clean modern lines. It looked normal, just an empty room with old objects in display cases.
‘That brings us to the Sistrin pearl,’ Shurmer said, ‘for the crystal mirror was not the only gift bequeathed to Elizabeth by her grandmother. It was matched with a jewel of rare beauty and price.’ He waved a hand towards the miniature of young Elizabeth that was displayed in the glass cabinet. Holly saw that she was wearing a string of pearls with one huge drop pearl in the centre. The simplicity of the necklace and the radiance of the jewels suited the innocence of the portrait. Curiously though, the big pearl was shaped exactly like the crystal mirror. It was a pear shape, or teardrop.
‘The Sistrin pearl was also said to hold great magic.’ Shurmer, too, was looking towards the cabinet where the pearl gleamed at Elizabeth’s neck. ‘It was supposedly a powerful talisman for good, but like the mirror it also possessed the power to wreak destruction if it was misused.’
‘Old pearls almost always have some sort of legend attached to them, though, don’t they?’ Holly said. ‘I mean, usually they have belonged to pirates or they are cursed or something. It was a very superstitious age.’
‘That is true,’ Shurmer said. ‘Certainly the Knights of the Rosy Cross believed the legends and used the pearl and the mirror together in their necromancy. They used their magic to create firewater, a medium through which the future could not only be seen but could also be transformed.’
‘That sounds rather dangerous to me,’ Holly said. ‘If you believe in these things …’ She hesitated. ‘Well, you’re meddling with forces you cannot control, aren’t you.’
‘Yes,’ Shurmer said. There was an odd note in his voice. ‘Indeed you are.’
‘Was this what Ben wanted to know?’ Holly asked. ‘The legend of the Sistrin pearl?’
Shurmer shook his head. ‘Dr Ansell already knew the history of the pearl,’ he said. ‘No—’ His eyes met hers and Holly felt something akin to an electric shock. ‘Your brother wished to find out what had happened to the pearl after it passed out of the possession of the Winter Queen.’
Holly felt even more bewildered. ‘Why on earth would he want to know that?’
‘I have no notion,’ Shurmer said calmly. ‘He would not say. That was why I wanted to meet him. I thought that perhaps he had found it.’
‘Found it?’ Holly felt completely bewildered. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Shurmer, I don’t quite understand …’
‘After the Winter Queen’s death, the pearl disappeared,’ Shurmer said, ‘but unlike the crystal mirror it never reappeared. We do not know its fate. It is lost.’ He made a slight gesture and the light flashed on the expensive gold watch he wore. ‘It is the holy grail of collectors, Miss Ansell. Everyone wants to find the Sistrin pearl. I myself have sought it for forty years.’
There was silence in the gallery. Holly could hear nothing except the soft hum of the air conditioning. She was very aware of Espen Shurmer watching her, gauging her every expression. She was not sure what was showing on her face. It had been astonishing enough to discover that Ben had been involved in some sort of family history research. Now to discover that he had been making enquiries about a long-lost pearl was extraordinary. It felt as though there should be a connection between the two but Holly could not imagine what it was. The story of the mirror and the pearl seemed no more than superstition and legend.
‘You should know,’ Shurmer said, and Holly realised that he was picking his words very carefully, ‘that after Dr Ansell contacted me I did make some enquiries into his background and history.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Forgive me, but I am a rich man and sometimes criminals will try to target my collection. Naturally I quickly realised your brother was no such person.’ His smile was disarming. ‘Yet equally I could find no obvious connection between your family and the Winter Queen to suggest why your brother might possess the Sistrin.’
‘Did you ask him?’ Holly said. ‘Whether he had the pearl, I mean?’
‘Yes,’ Shurmer said. His tone was pensive. ‘He was … evasive. He suggested we meet and I agreed.’
There was silence. Holly tried to remember her conversations with Ben. None of them had involved anything as arcane as lost treasure. She thought about the mill. She had spent much of the day tidying it up and she had found nothing unusual or unexpected. The lack of clues towards Ben’s disappearance had frustrated her.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said helplessly. ‘Ben said nothing to me. I really don’t think I can help.’
‘No matter,’ Shurmer said graciously. ‘I would ask, though, that if you discover anything, you let me know?’ He took a card from his inside pocket and passed it to Holly. It felt crisp and smooth beneath her fingers, the edges sharp.
‘Oh, of course,’ she said. ‘Of course I will.’
She stood up, suddenly wanting to be gone from this place, the supernatural stories and the crystal mirror’s sinister gleam. It was easy to believe in superstition when she was encased in a world like the Ashmolean, where thousand-year-old tribal masks watched her with blank eyes as she passed and she could hear the whispers of history.
‘I understand that you are most anxious to uncover the reasons for your brother’s disappearance, Miss Ansell,’ Shurmer said quietly, getting to his feet too. ‘I hope that you find what you are looking for.’
‘Thank you,’ Holly said. ‘I …’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sure he will turn up soon.’
She saw the smile that touched Shurmer’s eyes and knew that he knew she was lying.
‘Let us hope so,’ he said. He held out a hand and Holly shook it.
‘It was … very interesting … to meet you, Mr Shurmer.’
‘A pleasure, Miss Ansell,’ Shurmer said. He sounded as though he meant it.
Holly had already taken five steps away when she stopped and turned back. Espen Shurmer was standing where she had left him, beside the display case that contained the crystal mirror.
‘What was the special power that the pearl was said to possess?’ she asked. The words seemed to spring from her of their own volition. She was not even sure what had put them in her mind. Then, when Shurmer did not immediately reply, she added:
‘You said that the mirror destroyed its enemies through fire. What did the pearl do?’
She saw it then, the flicker of disquiet in Espen Shurmer’s eyes, and knew that for some reason he had deliberately kept this from her.
‘Mr Shurmer?’ she said.
‘The pearl’s power came from water,’ Shurmer said. ‘It destroyed its enemies through the medium of water.’
Holly thought of the mill, of the splash of the stream running beneath the wheel and the lazy glare of the sun on the pond. It had to be a coincidence, and yet she felt a deep chill in her bones. She thought of Ben and for a terrifying moment her mind was full of darkness. There was the rushing sound of water in her ears and a pressure in her lungs that smothered her breath. Coldness gripped her limbs and there was fear that cut like a blade.
‘The Winter Queen’s eldest son died from drowning,’ she said slowly. ‘And her brother – did he not die after swimming in the Thames?’
‘That is indeed so, Miss Ansell,’ Shurmer said. ‘Those who dismiss such magic as mere superstition are perhaps complacent.’
A huge shudder shook Holly. If Ben truly had the Sistrin pearl, had it destroyed him, too? She turned, practically running from the gallery, down the stairs and out of the main door oblivious to the curious glances of the people she passed. Her breath was coming in short bursts and she had a stitch in her side and when she reached the bottom of the steps she had to stop and steady herself against the wall.
Out in the street there were crowds gathering outside the theatre opposite, spilling into the road. The normality of noise and people and light slowly wrapped about Holly, banishing the mysteries of the museum. She straightened up and started to walk slowly towards St Giles, all the while wondering what had happened to her. Stories of cursed mirrors and legendary pearls, magic and superstition, were so alien to her that she was puzzled that she had entertained them for a moment. She used such ideas as inspiration for her engraving designs but she did not really believe in them. Or she had not, until tonight.
Now, though, she felt on edge, adrift, rocked by uncertainty. She told herself that in ten minutes she would be back at her grandparents’ house and they would be bursting to tell her that they had had a message from Ben. He would be safe, he would be on the way home to Tasha and all would be well. Later, when all the fuss had died down, she would ask him about the pearl and Espen Shurmer, and he would explain that it had just been a casual enquiry as a result of something he had stumbled across in the family history …
Holly turned left into the Woodstock Road, heading for Summertown, walking briskly even though she was so tired. It was raining a little, the pavements slick, the raindrops running down the car windows and stinging Holly’s face, blurring the city lights to an endless string of pearls that was finally swallowed in darkness.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_8ec61b17-b92b-571e-aa24-314df6768007)
Palace of Rhenen, June 1632
William Craven had kept quiet about the soothsaying. Elizabeth was grateful he had held his tongue. At the same time she was ashamed he had seen her weakness. She owed him no apology for believing in the power of the mirror and the pearl, but she did regret revealing to him, however tacitly, her doubts in Frederick’s ability to lead, to fight, to win back his lands. She had been weak and had shown too little faith. Time had revealed her mistake. Frederick’s letters to her were full of joy and good news; Gustavus Adolphus had received him with all the ceremony due to a king and included him in his military councils. Plans were advancing for the retaking of the Palatine lands. Kreuznach had been reclaimed. Soon he would be sending for her to take their rightful place in Heidelberg once more.
Craven was Frederick’s squire now and had been his
constant messenger, carrying the news from the campaign in Germany and taking Elizabeth’s more domestic correspondence back to the King. He had ridden in just as she had been about to set out from the palace that morning to hunt in the woods above Rhenen. Elizabeth had insisted that he accompany the party and give her the news as they rode. It had perhaps been unkind of her given that he was weary and travel-stained, and only three months before had been injured in the taking of the castle at Kreuznach. Frederick had commended him for his bravery, saying that Craven had been first through the breached walls and that the King of Sweden himself had praised him for being a fine soldier.
Elizabeth glanced at him now as they rode side by side through the dappled shade. They had outrun the rest of the hunting party who even now were crashing through the woods below, calling out, frightening away any deer in earshot. She had allowed her elder sons to join her that morning, but sometimes she despaired that they would ever learn the cunning and guile of the true hunter. Yet they were young still, and eager for the chase. She supposed she would reproach them more had they been timorous creatures who stayed at home whilst she rode out.
Craven’s face was, as always, quite severe in repose. He made no attempt to entertain her or to chatter inconsequentially as so many courtiers did. Elizabeth wondered what it felt like to be him; to be so reckless of his personal safety that he would fight without reserve, without fear. It was no wonder that her sons admired him as a hero. They were uncomplicated boys, fired with the zeal to regain their inheritance. They wanted to be soldiers, understood nothing of politics and cared even less. A man of such straightforward convictions as William Craven commanded their loyalty.
‘You have not yet told me the news from Munich,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I heard that my husband supped with the Duke of Bavaria.’
‘And wished you present, madam, to add beauty to the proceedings,’ Craven said.
Elizabeth laughed. ‘Frederick’s words, I’ll wager, not yours, Lord Craven. You are not known for your courtly address.’
‘As to that, madam,’ Craven said, ‘I can vouch that there are no beauties in Bavaria other than the scenery.’
They were still laughing when the first of the hunting party broke through the trees into the dappled clearing. Elizabeth felt a wilful urge to wheel her horse around and dig her heels into its flanks, leaving them standing. Then she saw Charles Louis, his expression hovering on the edge of mutiny at the prospect of his mother outrunning him again, so instead she reined back and allowed them to surround her, chattering, and rode forwards decorously out of the shadows and onto the open hill.
From here there was a beautiful view of the little town of Rhenen, clinging to the hillside, and the curl of the river to the east. The sunlight twinkled on the gables of the hunting lodge Frederick had built, finished only the previous year. They’d had so little time to enjoy this place together before war had come again. Elizabeth felt a chill premonition that they never would.
The servants were spreading out a meal on a plateau in the shade of the trees. They scurried around unpacking boxes, setting rugs and cushions. There was glazed ham and pastries, roasted meats and red wine. Craven had gone to fetch a glass for her. She was about to dismount – Billingsley, her Master of the Horse, had come forwards to help her.
‘Why such a long face?’ she asked him, knowing full well it was because she had chosen to ride ahead with Craven leaving him to watch over the princes.
Billingsley flushed. He did not have Craven’s easy way of responding to her comments, whether they were teasing or serious. He was too stiff and formal, conscious of his status and of hers too. She supposed William Craven ought to show a similar deference but he never did and she had given up expecting it of him. Besides, something about Craven’s uncomplicated approach was refreshing. He told her the truth as he saw it. He could be blunt, but he was never disrespectful.
There was a sudden crashing sound of a branch falling and shouts from across the clearing where the Princes were playing hide and seek, climbing trees, their irrepressible high spirits toppling over into dangerous risk-taking. Elizabeth spun around in the saddle.
‘Don’t let them—’ she said to Billingsley, but it was too late, one of the trees was rotten. The falling branch had been a precursor and now the whole trunk shook and with a roaring sound like the tide rushing in it fell, the branches clashing together. Some fool screamed. Elizabeth’s horse took fright, rearing and taking her by surprise. She lost the reins and made a grab for the mane as the horse bolted, plunging back into the trees the way they had come.
Elizabeth saw a jumbled vision of images flash past: Craven, running for his horse, Billingsley, his mouth hanging open in shock, the servants frozen to the spot, the boys pausing in their shrieks of excitement to stare after her in horror. Then all hell broke loose behind her with screams and shouts, but all she could do was cling on for dear life, crouched low as the trees whipped overhead and the horse ran and ran, propelled onwards by its own panic until at last it slowed and then stopped.
She slid down to the ground and sat for a moment half-lying, half-tumbled whilst she caught her breath. Her first sensation was relief and her second, following swiftly, was anger. She was the best female equestrian at court, one of the best riders there was. Yes, the horse was skittish and high-spirited – even now she was shying at her own shadow, ears flat as she blew out her breath in great heaving pants – but Elizabeth had prided herself on the fact that she was one of the few who could ride her. Her pride had been richly served now.
There was no sound, no one calling for her, no noise of men or carts, nothing but the wind in the trees and the chirps of the birds, so loud they seemed to fill her ears. She reached for the reins and started to stroke the horse’s nose, speaking softly to her, calming her until she too felt calmer. Soon she would be able to remount and try to follow her tracks back to the edge of the wood. It could not be difficult. She would find her way back to Rhenen. Besides, had she not always said she wanted to be alone? Now, unexpectedly, she had as much solitude as she could deal with.
The bushes rustled on her right, but it was only a bird foraging in the undergrowth. She got to her feet stiffly and, leading the horse, started to walk in what she hoped was the right direction. There was little sunlight through the thick canopy and the branches sprouted low, tangling with the thick and thorny bushes. Within a few minutes Elizabeth was hot and scratched and dirty, hungry too, and resenting the picnic left so far behind. Being alone was not as enjoyable as she had thought it would be. There was something unfriendly about the wood, its darkness and silence. It felt as though someone was watching her.
The horse picked up on her nervousness, flicking her ears, whisking her tail. When a noisy bird crashed through the leaves above and flew off with a startled alarm call Elizabeth thought she would bolt again and gripped the reins more tightly, but the horse was too tired. They both were.
The bird had been warning of an approach. Elizabeth could hear footsteps and turned sharply just as a man stepped onto the path in front of her. The sun was behind him and for a moment she could not see his face, then she realised it was William Craven.
‘Craven!’ she said. Her voice wobbled, betraying her. She wondered if he was going to berate her for poor horsemanship or make light of her headlong flight, but he did neither. His face was white and he looked afraid. He dropped to one knee and took her hand, kissing it.
‘Madam! You are safe?’
‘As you see,’ Elizabeth said. She felt shock and something more intimate that shocked her all the more. She resisted the urge to touch his bent head.
‘Thank God.’ His voice had strengthened. He scrambled to his feet. ‘I was afraid for you.’ He corrected himself. ‘We were all afraid, for she set off at such a mad gallop with you. Everyone has been searching the forest.’
‘Then you had better lead me back to them,’ Elizabeth said. She looked about her. ‘I have no notion where we are. It was lucky you found me.’
‘You are almost at the edge of the trees.’ Craven had taken the horse’s bridle, leading her between the trees, at the same time holding back the brambles and briars that snatched at Elizabeth’s skirt. ‘You would doubtless have found your way back safely before too long.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Elizabeth said, ‘it was you who found me. I owe you a debt of gratitude, Lord Craven. Another one. As does my husband.’
‘Your husband?’ Craven paused. They were on the edge of the wood. ‘Yes, of course.’ His voice changed. ‘His Majesty would be distraught to know of your accident.’
‘There is no harm done,’ Elizabeth said. She looked closely at his face as she stepped past him, out into the sunshine and light and fresh air. ‘You, though,’ she said, noting the lines etched deep on his face, ‘you look as though you need a physician. I had forgotten you were wounded lately. Are you in pain?
A smile lightened his expression, lifting the lines of anxiety from about his eyes. ‘I am quite well, thank you, madam.’ He came up to her and set his hands on her waist to lift her up into the saddle. They were very close together. Elizabeth looked up into his face, the strong line of his jaw, the cleft in his chin, the light in his hazel eyes. Something shifted inside her and warmed and she caught her breath on a wave of longing.
He looked down then, catching her desire, and suddenly he was close enough to kiss and she saw the heat in his eyes and for one long moment they stared at one another. Then he took a step back and lifted her, very gently, into the saddle and turned his back as he led the horse out onto the open hillside towards home.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_df75eba6-aa3e-58af-8dc4-6a4585d48302)
Hester was waiting for Holly when she got back to Summertown. The house was warm and light. The smell of a casserole cooking reached her from the kitchen and made Holly’s stomach rumble. Bonnie was waiting too, waving her feathery tail with the sort of enthusiasm she showed whether Holly had been away for an hour or a day. Holly felt her cold unhappiness thaw a little as she bent down to give the dog a cuddle.
‘Hello, Gran,’ she said, smiling. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Darling …’ Her grandmother planted a firm kiss on Holly’s cheek, one each side, and hugged her. She felt frail to Holly, her bones brittle beneath the cashmere jumper she wore. ‘I’m doing all right,’ she said, ‘but how are you? How did your meeting go with Ben’s friend?’
‘It was fine,’ Holly said lightly. She brushed her lips against her grandmother’s cheek. It was dusted with pink and felt marshmallow soft.
‘He hadn’t heard from Ben, had he?’ Hester asked, and Holly could hear the lift of hope in her voice.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. She wasn’t going to tell her grandmother about Espen Shurmer and the bizarre suggestions that Ben had been connected, however vaguely, to some sort of occult society. It was all just too strange to consider.
She watched her grandmother as she walked across the kitchen to reach for the kettle and turn it on. Tall, thin and ineffably elegant, Hester’s shoulders were square and her back as straight as a rod. Army discipline, Holly thought. There was a picture of the Brigadier, Holly’s great-grandfather, in one of the bedrooms upstairs. In it, he was whippet thin and the expression in his eyes suggested that he would not tolerate insubordination in the ranks or slumping in small girls. Holly wondered how much that discipline was helping her grandmother to deal with Ben’s disappearance. She had had so much to bear over the years, losing her daughter and son-in-law and taking on their two children, and now having to deal with Ben going missing.
‘Tasha rang,’ Hester said now, over the sound of the kettle boiling. ‘She hasn’t heard anything from Ben either. His practice is in a complete tizzy. They’ve had to get a locum in.’
‘Of course,’ Holly said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ She realised for the first time that the ripples from Ben’s disappearance would spread out much further than his family and immediate friends. She had rung round as many people as she knew, hoping someone would have had word from him, but she realised with a pang that she didn’t know half of Ben’s acquaintances. Trying to find him seemed a hopeless task.
‘Tasha seems very angry and convinced he’s gone on purpose to punish her for something.’ Her grandmother spoke without inflection but Holly could see the effort it cost her; her hands shook a little as she filled the teapot. Holly went across and put an arm about her and for a moment they stood close, their heads resting against each other.
‘Do you suppose Tasha’s right?’ Hester asked suddenly. ‘That Ben was having an affair and has gone off with another woman?’ She took two blue and white patterned mugs from the cupboard and warmed them with the spare water from the kettle. ‘I don’t want to believe it, but I suppose it could be true.’
‘Gran, no!’ Holly said. She felt shocked that her grandmother would even countenance the idea. ‘You know Ben wouldn’t do something like that.’
She saw her grandmother’s brows lift slightly but she let the subject go.
‘This is all Tasha’s fault,’ Holly said, suddenly fierce. ‘Suggesting Ben was unfaithful. I’m so angry with her!’ She had tried never to criticise Tasha to her grandparents because she knew that they’d had as delicate a relationship with her as Holly, but now she’d had enough. ‘Ben wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘He was very loyal. He would never run off without a word. Abandoning Florence and his work responsibilities … That’s just not in character.’
She saw her grandmother’s shoulders slump and she gave her an apologetic smile. ‘I’m sure you’re right, darling.’ Hester said. ‘This whole business makes me doubt my own sanity.’
Holly nodded. ‘The trouble is that Tasha has told the police they were having relationship difficulties and so they don’t think he is missing in the true sense,’ she said, fighting to keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘So they won’t do anything to look for him.’ She spread her hands wide. ‘It makes me feel so helpless,’ she said. ‘I’m angry and frustrated and I don’t know what to do.’
Hester poured the tea and passed one of the mugs to Holly. ‘If it weren’t relationship problems they would imply he had run away because of something else,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘Financial worries, depression. They would suggest he might have taken his own life …’ She looked up and Holly saw the fear in her eyes. It was so stark that she felt her heart miss a beat. ‘I do worry that might be true,’ Hester said simply. ‘I can’t help myself.’
‘Gran …’ Holly said. She was even more horrified now. ‘No. Ben wouldn’t …’ She stopped because she couldn’t even form the words.
‘Oh, well …’ Hester’s voice strengthened. ‘I’m sure I’m just being negative. We can’t give up hope, especially so soon.’ She squeezed Holly’s hand. ‘He’ll be back soon, I’m sure of it.’
Holly wondered if the words sounded a little more hollow each time someone said them and perhaps her grandmother felt the same because she turned away as though to shield her expression from Holly, like she was ashamed.
‘Your grandfather is dining at Balliol tonight, so it’s just us,’ she said brightly. ‘I hope you don’t mind, darling? I think perhaps he doesn’t know what to do with himself so he’s trying to stick to some sort of routine.’
‘That’s OK.’ There was a lump in Holly’s throat. For so many years she had thought her grandparents invincible. It was frightening to think her grandfather was feeling as lost and confused as she was and that her grandmother was putting on a brave face. ‘I’ll see him again tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Lovely,’ her grandmother said. She opened the Aga and took out a battered-looking casserole pot. ‘It’s lamb hot pot and beans.’
‘My favourite.’ Holly smiled at her.
They ate supper in the living room, with trays on their knees. The room was grand, but made smaller by the lamplight and the fire and the heavy curtains that blotted out the twilight.
‘You don’t mind a fire, do you, darling?’ Hester asked. ‘I know it’s been a hot day but I always feel the chill when night falls.’
‘As long as you don’t mind me falling asleep,’ Holly said, stifling a yawn.
‘Of course not,’ Hester said. ‘You must be exhausted. I don’t suppose any of us have slept since …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘We wondered if you wanted to stay for a few days?’ she added. ‘Guy as well, if he’s coming down …’ There was an unspoken question in the words. ‘Or do you have to get back to London?’
‘I’m not going back to London,’ Holly said. ‘Or rather I will, but only to arrange to have everything sent down to Ashdown. I’m going to live at the mill for a while.’
Hester dropped her fork with a clatter. ‘Darling!’ She looked appalled. ‘Is it really a good idea to uproot yourself from home like this? It could all be for nothing.’
‘I realise that,’ Holly said, ‘but I feel I need to be there.’
‘But …’ It was unusual for Holly to see her grandmother lost for words. Before her retirement Hester had been a professor of mathematics; incisive, objective and able to pinpoint an issue and dissect it with forensic skill. ‘Please don’t misunderstand me,’ Hester said now, very carefully. ‘I realise that you may want to be at Ashdown in order to try to find Ben. You want to be on the spot; perhaps it will help you to feel closer to him. But is this really wise?’
Holly sighed. She had been expecting a reaction like this but it was difficult to explain, especially when she didn’t really understand the impulse herself. All she knew was that she had to be there. It felt right. It felt like the only place to be.
‘I only know that I want to be at Ashdown at the moment,’ Holly said. ‘Guy and I are over.’ She met her grandmother’s eyes. ‘We were over long before this, if I’m honest. I just needed a jolt to make me see the truth.’
‘Again,’ Hester said, ‘not the best time to be making life-changing decisions.’
Holly sighed. ‘Trust me. Please. Sometimes it’s exactly the right time to see what is important and what isn’t.’
Now it was her grandmother’s turn to sigh. ‘Oh Holly.’
‘Don’t tell me that you never thought I’d made a mistake,’ Holly said.
Hester looked reproachful. ‘Now you’re putting me on the spot. But yes …’ She shook her head, somewhere between exasperation and indulgence. ‘I did wonder. You’re so self-contained I never thought you would marry anyone. I was very surprised when you got engaged. And I was even more surprised you chose Guy.’
Holly demolished the last of the hotpot. She was astonished to find she had such an appetite. She hadn’t eaten at all, hadn’t felt like eating, for several days
‘I’ve wondered about that myself more than once since we split,’ she admitted. ‘Guy was nice.’ She winced. ‘Okay, that’s not a good reason. He was funny, and charming, and we had a good time together. And that was all I wanted.’
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Nicola Cornick
For fans of Barbara Erskine and Kate Morton comes an unforgettable novel about three women and the power one lie can have over history.London, 1662:There was something the Winter Queen needed to tell him. She fought for the strength to speak.‘The crystal mirror is a danger. It must be destroyed – ‘He replied instantly. ‘It will’.Ashdown, Oxfordshire, present day: Ben Ansell is researching his family tree when he disappears. As his sister Holly begins a desperate search, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to an ornate antique mirror and to the diary of Lavinia, a 19th century courtesan who was living at Ashdown House when it burned to the ground over 200 years ago.Intrigued, and determined to find out more about the tragedy at Ashdown, Holly’s only hope is that uncovering the truth about the past will lead her to Ben.‘Fans of Kate Morton will enjoy this gripping tale.‘– Candis
NICOLA CORNICK is a historian and author. She studied at London University and Ruskin College Oxford and works for the National Trust as a guide at the seventeenth century hunting lodge Ashdown House in Oxfordshire. Her award-winning books are international bestsellers and have been translated into 26 languages.
ISBN: 978-1-474-03808-9
HOUSE OF SHADOWS
© 2015 Nicola Cornick
Published in Great Britain 2015
by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
Version: 2018-06-29
To Andrew, who has lived with my obsession with Ashdown House and William Craven for many years.
All my love as always.
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time.
Rabindranath Tagore
Acknowledgements (#ulink_88c16fea-7f37-5756-8f21-4d933bed68f2)
All my thanks go to my wonderful editor Sally Williamson who had faith in me to write this book and who gave me endless encouragement and support. I’m also hugely grateful to all my writing friends, especially the Word Wenches and the lovely Sarah Morgan for giving me the confidence finally to write the book of my heart.
I am very fortunate to work as part of a great team of volunteers at Ashdown House. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and for being so much fun to work with. Special thanks go to Maureen Dawson and to Richard Henderson at the National Trust.
I’d also like to thank Denny Andrews for showing me the site of Coleshill House and Neil Fraser for being so generous in sharing his archive on the Ashdown Estate.
I would like to pay tribute to the late Keith Blaxhall, for many years the Estate Manager at Ashdown Park. His enthusiasm and encouragement was inspiring to me and it was a great privilege to have known him.
Finally a big thank you to Julie Carr for allowing me to ‘borrow’ her lovely dog Bonnie for this story, and to Bonnie herself for graciously agreeing to star in House of Shadows.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u06e74c17-b31d-53d7-83e2-fb4d7f7789ec)
About the Author (#u110cb157-68ae-5957-b362-f599102432ce)
Title Page (#ubb91d28a-868e-5aee-a4ed-e6a0f8e500bd)
Copyright (#uc8f36ce3-31f5-5ca5-b588-399e118e1cdb)
Dedication (#u18018a90-63d4-5324-9554-7b5b2d35c8e6)
Epigraph (#u8eb7ac93-b553-5782-89f1-2c8cf6d7207d)
Acknowledgements (#uc60519fa-22ad-5390-9f9c-6dc941e1f984)
Prologue (#ufff634ef-c8b1-542f-993f-854dc54388a8)
Chapter 1 (#u4ca2de71-007e-5322-8327-0382baeac7d4)
Chapter 2 (#ub68a13c6-f95b-57ba-9a40-09600be8c0ea)
Chapter 3 (#ua0944154-93a7-547e-a64b-e9269b0b4cea)
Chapter 4 (#u53fc19dd-da95-5a55-be1f-aae95af4cff2)
Chapter 5 (#u950e416c-aae0-5bf9-95ed-3c4d3edf11e8)
Chapter 6 (#u5efdd78d-9d5c-5d23-afa6-dd7294d2c7fe)
Chapter 7 (#ua87795c5-f9a2-5f67-acd1-3bace4494427)
Chapter 8 (#u03109c46-e0d3-5d8d-9aca-f4f500881430)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract from The Woman in the Lake (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_73408c36-cc75-5f48-b905-26d1455bbcb5)
London, February 1662
She dreamed about the house on the night before she died. In the dream she felt as insignificant as a child; a miniature queen clad in a cream silk gown embroidered with gold. The collar prickled the nape of her neck as she craned her head to gaze up, up at the dazzling white stone of the house against the blue of the sky. It made her dizzy. Her head spun and the golden ball that adorned the roof seemed to plunge like a shooting star falling to earth.
Beyond the walls of her bedchamber crouched the city; filthy, noisy and seething with life. But in her dreams she was far from London; she had followed the wide ribbon of the Thames upriver, past the hunting ground at Richmond, and the great grey walls of Windsor, to a place where two rivers met. She took the narrower path through drowsy meadows thick with daisies and the hum of bees, for in her dream she was a summer princess, not a winter queen. The river became a chalk stream that bubbled up from springs deep in the dappled woods until finally she burst out of the shade and onto the highlands, and there was the house in a hollow of the hills, a little white palace fit for a queen.
Her lips moved. One of her women, weary, anxious, attentive, bent to catch the whisper. It could not be long now.
‘William.’
It caused consternation. She had sent him away, her cavalier, told her servants to bar the door against him.
‘Madam …’ The woman was uncertain. ‘I don’t think—’
The queen’s eyelashes flickered. Her eyes, blue-grey, were clear, imperious.
‘At once.’
‘Majesty.’ The woman curtsied, ran.
The room was hot, windows and doors closed, fire roaring. She drifted between sleep and waking, on the fringes of shadow. Outside, dawn was breaking over the river, the water rippling with a silver wake. It was unseasonably mild for February and the air felt heavy, waiting.
He came.
She heard the stir, felt the cool shift of the air before the door closed again, sealing them in.
‘Leave us.’
No one argued, which was good because she was too tired for arguments now. Her eyes would not open. In the silence she could hear everything though; the hiss of the fire as a log settled deeper in the grate, the creak of the floorboards beneath his boots as he crossed the room to her side.
‘Sit. Please.’ It was an effort to speak. There was no time for discussion now, or apologies, even if she had wished to make them, which she did not.
He sat. Now that he was close she could smell on him the night cold and the scent of the city. She could not see him but she did not need to. She knew every plane of his face, each line, each curve. It was as though they were written on her heart, an indelible picture.
There was something she needed to tell him. She fought for the strength to speak.
‘The crystal mirror—’
‘I will get it back. I swear it,’ he replied instantly. A second later his hand grasped hers, warm and reassuring but still she shook her head. She knew it was too late.
‘It will elude you,’ she said.
He had never understood the power of the Order of the Rosy Cross or its instruments, though perhaps he did now, now that the damage was done.
‘Danger to you—’ She tried one last time to warn him. ‘Take care or it will destroy you and your kin as it did me and mine.’ She was gasping for breath, frightened.
His fingers tightened on hers. ‘I understand. Believe me.’
She felt the knot inside her ease. She had to trust him. There was no alternative. Her life was unravelling like a skein of wool. Soon the thread would run out.
‘I want you to take this. Keep it safe, hidden.’ With an effort she opened her eyes and unclenched the fingers of her right hand. A huge pearl spilled into her lap, glowing with baleful fire in the subdued light. Even now, looking on it for the last time, she could not like it, for all its ethereal beauty. It was too powerful. It was not the fault of the jewel, of course, but of the men who had sought to use it for their own wicked purposes. Both mirror and pearl had once been a force for good, strong and protective, until their power had been corrupted through the greed of men. The Knights had been warned not to misuse the instruments of the Order and they had disobeyed. They had unleashed destruction through fire and water, just as the prophecy had foretold.
She heard the catch of Craven’s breath. ‘The Sistrin pearl should be given to your heir.’
‘Not yet.’ She was so very tired now but this last task must be completed. ‘You need to break the link between the pearl and the mirror. One day the mirror will return and then it must be destroyed. Keep the pearl safe until that is done.’
Craven did not refuse her gift or tell her that he had no time for superstition. Once he had scorned her beliefs. No longer. She watched him scoop up the pearl on its heavy gold chain and stow it within his shirt. His face was grave and set, as though he were facing battle, such was the weight of her commission.
‘Thank you.’ Her smile was weary. Her eyes closed. ‘I can sleep now.’
There was a sudden commotion. The door swung back with a crash and a protesting creak of hinges. Voices; loud, commanding. Footsteps, equally loud: her son Rupert, come to be with her at the end, always hasty, always late.
There was so little time now.
She opened her eyes again. The room swam with shadows and the red and gold of firelight but she felt cold. She looked on Craven for the last time. Grief was etched deep into his face.
‘Old,’ she thought. ‘We have had our time.’ The loss cut her like a knife. If only …
‘William,’ she said. ‘I am sorry. I wish we had another chance.’
His face lightened. He gave her the smile that had shaken her heart from the moment she had first seen him.
‘Perhaps we shall,’ he said, ‘in another life.’
She forgot that her time could be measured in breaths now, not hours or even minutes, and tightened her grip urgently on his hand.
‘The Knights of the Rosy Cross believed in the rebirth of the spirit,’ she said, ‘but it is against the Christian teaching.’
He nodded. His eyes were smiling. ‘I know it is. Yet still I believe it. It comforts me to think that we shall meet again in another time.’
Her eyes closed. A small smile touched her lips. ‘It comforts me, too,’ she said softly. ‘Next time we shall be together always. Next time we shall not fail.’
Chapter 1 (#ulink_c9556483-e057-55ee-944f-8aa8125d982f)
Palace of Holyroodhouse, Scotland, November 1596
King James paused with his hand already raised to the iron latch. Even now he was not sure that he was doing the right thing. A spiteful winter wind skittered along the stone corridor, lifting the tapestries from the walls and setting him shivering deep within his fur-lined tunic.
The pearl and the mirror should be given to Elizabeth, that was indisputable; they were her birthright. Yet this was a dangerous gift. James knew their power.
The Queen of England had made no show of her baptismal present to her goddaughter and namesake. In fact it was widely believed that Mr Robert Bowes of Aske, who had stood proxy for Her Majesty at the christening, had brought no gift with him at all. It was only after the service had been completed, the baby duly presented as the first daughter of Scotland, and the guests had dispersed to enjoy the feast, that Aske had called James to one side and passed him a velvet box in which rested the Sistrin pearl and the jewelled mirror.
‘These belonged to your mother,’ Bowes had said. ‘Her Majesty is eager that they should be passed to her granddaughter.’
For diplomacy’s sake James had bitten back the retort that had sprung to his lips. Trust the old bitch of England to present as a gift those items that were his daughter’s by right. But then he could play this game as well as any; he had paid Elizabeth of England the compliment of naming his firstborn girl after her. It was outrageous flattery for his mother’s murderer, but politics was of more import than spilt blood.
‘Majesty?’
He turned. Alison Hay, the baby’s mistress-nurse was approaching. Her face bore no trace of surprise or alarm, although he could only imagine her speculation in finding King James of Scotland dithering outside his baby daughter’s chambers. He should have thought to send for one of the Princess Elizabeth’s attendants rather than to loiter like a fool in cold corridors. But Mistress Hay’s arrival had brought with it relief. There was now no cause to knock or to enter this realm of women. James’ insides curdled at the thought of the stench of the room, of stale sweat and that sweetly sour smell that seemed to cling to a baby. The women would all be grouped about the child’s cradle, fussing and smiling and clucking like so many hens. Thank God that soon they would all be departing for Linlithgow where the princess would have her own household under the guardianship of Lord and Lady Livingston.
He groped in his pocket and his fingers closed over the black velvet of the box.
‘This is for the Princess Elizabeth. A baptismal gift.’ He held it out to her.
Mistress Hay did not take the box immediately. A frown creased her brow.
‘Would Your Majesty not prefer to give it to Lady Livingston—’
‘No!’ James was desperate to be rid of the burden, desperate to be gone. ‘Take it.’ He pushed it at her. The box fell between their hands, springing open, the contents rolling out onto the stone floor.
He heard Mistress Hay gasp.
Few men – or women – had seen either the Sistrin pearl or the jewelled mirror. The pearl had never been worn and the mirror had never been used. Both were shaped like teardrops. Both shone with an unearthly bluish-white glow, the one seeming a reflection of the other: matched, equal, alike.
The pearl had been born of water, found in the oyster beds of the River Tay centuries before, and had been part of the collection of King Alexander I. The mirror had been forged in fire by the glassblowers of Murano, its frame decorated with diamonds of the finest quality and despatched as a gift to James’ mother Mary, Queen of Scots on her marriage. Mary had delighted in the similarity of the two and had had the rich black velvet box made for them.
Yet from the first there had been rumours about both pieces. The Sistrin pearl was said to have formed from the tears of the water goddess Briant and to offer its owner powerful protection, but if its magic was misused it would bring death through water. There were whispers that the Sistrin had caused King Alexander’s wife Sybilla to drown when Alexander had tried to bind its power to his will. The mirror was also a potent charm, but it was said that it would wreak devastation by fire if it were used for corrupt purposes. James was a rational man of science and he did not believe in magic, but something about the jewels set the hairs rising on his neck. If he had been of a superstitious disposition he would have said that it was almost as though he could feel their power like a living thing; crouched, waiting.
Alison Hay was on her knees now, scrabbling to catch the pearl before it rolled away and was lost down a drain or through a crack in the floor. James did not trouble to help. He did not want to touch it. The mirror lay where it had fallen, facing up, miraculously unbroken.
Alison grabbed the pearl and struggled to her feet, flushed, breathing hard. In one hand she had the box, the pearl safely back within it, glowing with innocent radiance. In the other she held the mirror. As James watched, she glanced down at its milky blue surface. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. James snatched it from her, bundling it roughly face down into the box and snapping the lid shut.
‘Don’t look into it,’ he said. ‘Never look into it.’
It was too late. Her face was chalk white, eyes blank pools.
‘What did you see?’ James’ voice was harsh with emotion. Terror gripped him, visceral, setting his heart pounding. Then, as she did not reply: ‘Answer me!’
‘Fire,’ she said. She spoke flatly as if by rote, ‘Buildings eaten by flame. Gunpowder. Death. And a child in a cream-coloured gown with a crown of gold.’
‘Twaddle.’ James gripped the box as though he could crush the contents; crush the very idea of them. ‘Superstitious nonsense, all of it.’ Yet even he could hear the hollow ring of fear in his voice. Before magic, cold reason fled.
‘Lock them away,’ he said, pushing the box back into the nurse’s hands. ‘Keep them safe.’
‘Majesty.’ She dropped a curtsey.
It was done. From behind the closed door he heard the thin wail of a baby and the murmur of female voices joined in a soothing lullaby. James turned on his heel and walked away, heading for the courtyard and the fresh clean air of winter to chase away the shadow that stalked him. Yet even outside under a crystalline grey sky plump with snow he was not free of guilt. He had given the Sistrin and the mirror to his baby daughter, as the Queen of England had commanded, but it felt that in some terrible way he had cursed her with it.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_18425b2a-016a-581f-bb06-98b5f43ef7ae)
Wassenaer Hof, The Hague, autumn 1631
There was a full moon and a cold easterly wind when the Knights of the Rosy Cross came. The wind came from the sea, crossing the wide sand dunes and whipping through the streets to curl about the corners of the Wassenaer Hof, seeking entry through cracks and crannies.
Elizabeth watched the knights’ arrival from her window high in the western wing of the palace. The moonlight dimmed the candles and fell pitilessly bright on the cobbles. In that white world the men were no more than dark cloaked shadows.
She had thought that such folly was over. The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross belonged to a time long ago. It had been a dream borne of their youth. She and her husband Frederick had been so passionate about it once. They had been possessed of a desire to change the world, to spread knowledge, science and wisdom. Their court at Heidelberg had been a refuge for scholars and philosophers.
Now she felt so very different, drained of faith, betrayed, as flimsy as the playing card for which she was named the Queen of Hearts.
She was a pale reflection; an echo fading into the dark. Men had called her union with Frederick the marriage of Thames and Rhine; a political match between a German prince and an English princess destined to strengthen the Protestant cause. She had not cared for such things. She had not been educated for politics then. It had been simple; one look at Frederick and she had fallen in love. They had wed in winter but she had felt blessed by light and fortune. Frederick’s ascent to the throne of Bohemia had been the final glory. The future had been so bright, but it had been a false dawn followed by nothing but grief and loss. Bohemia had been lost in battle after only a year, Frederick’s own lands overrun by his enemies. They had fled to The Hague to a makeshift court and a makeshift life.
Elizabeth rested one hand on her swollen belly. After eighteen years of marriage and twelve children, people spoke of her love for Frederick in terms of indulgence, never questioning her devotion. They knew nothing.
Tonight she was so angry. She knew why Frederick had summoned the knights. There was new hope, he said. Their long exile would soon be over. The Swedish King had smashed the army of the Holy Roman Emperor and was sweeping through Germany in triumph. Frederick wanted the Knights of the Rosy Cross to scry for him, to see whether Gustavus Adolphus’ victory would give him back his patrimony. He had taken both the Sistrin pearl and the crystal mirror with him to foretell the future; the knights demanded it. But the treasures were not Frederick’s to take; they were hers.
Elizabeth felt restless. Her rooms were noisy. They always were; her ladies chattered louder than her monkeys. She was never alone. Tonight though, she was in no mood for music or masques or cards. Suddenly the repetition of her life, the sameness, the tedium, the hopes raised and dashed time and again, made her so frustrated that she shook with fury.
‘Majesty?’ One of her ladies spoke timidly.
‘Fetch my cloak,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The plain black.’
They bustled around her like anxious hens. She should not go out. His Majesty would not like it. It was too cold. She was with child. She should be resting.
She ignored them all and closed the door on their clucking. Down the stairs, along the stone corridor, past the great hall with its gilded leather, where the servants were sweeping and tidying after supper, out into the courtyard, feeling the sting of the cold air. She passed the stables and as always the scent of horses, leather and hay comforted her. Riding – hunting – made her life of exile tolerable.
She looked back across the yard at the lights of the palace winking behind their brightly coloured leaded panes. She had never considered the Wassenaer Hof to be her home, even though she had lived in The Hague for over ten years now. They still called her the Queen of Bohemia, but in truth she reigned over nothing but this palace of red brick with its jostling gables and ridiculous little towers.
The building was swallowed in shadows. Here in the gardens there was the sharp scent of clipped box that always caught in her throat and the sweet smokiness of camomile. The gravel of the parterre crunched beneath her feet. She could never walk here without thinking of the gardens Frederick had designed for her at Heidelberg Castle, with their grottoes and cascades, their orange trees and their statuary. All had been on a grand scale that had matched Frederick’s ambition. All gone. She had heard that an artillery battery now stood on the site of her English Garden. As for Frederick’s ambition, she had believed that had been crushed too, struck down at the Battle of the White Mountain, buried under the losses that had bruised his honour and his fortune alike. But then, tonight, he had sent for the Knights of the Rosy Cross and brought them here, to the water tower, to tell him if his fortunes would rise again.
He had taken their son, too. Charles Louis was a mere thirteen years old, but Frederick had said it was time his heir should see what the future held for him. That had angered Elizabeth too. She had already lost one son and kept Charles Louis close. He was too precious to put in danger.
She drew the hood of the cloak more closely about her face. The scrape of the metal latch sounded loud in her ears; the wall sconce flared in the draught. She closed the door softly behind her and started to descend the stone steps to the well, taking care to make no noise. It was odd that for all that the old tower was dry and the stair well lit, she felt as though the water had seeped into the very stones and now lapped around her, inimical and cold. She had hated water ever since it had taken the life of her eldest son two years before. Even now, his drowning haunted her dreams. She could not shake the belief that in some way she and Frederick had brought the loss upon themselves through the misuse of the Sistrin pearl’s magic. Her father had warned her of its power and told her it should never be used for personal gain.
Elizabeth shivered, clutching the edge of her cloak closer to ward off the cold. Below she could hear the sound of water now; when the well was full the overflow from the Bosbeek, the forest stream, flowed through an arched drain and out into the Hofvijver Lake. Tonight it sang softly as it ran. The music of the water was a good omen. Frederick would be pleased.
Another step and she passed the guardroom on the left. Shadows shifted behind the half-open door. She held her breath and trod more softly still, down towards the sacred well.
At the bottom of the spiral stair the space opened out into a room with a vaulted ceiling held aloft by stone pillars. It was familiar to her, as were the items on a table to the right: a bible, a skull, an hourglass, a compass and a globe, the tools of the Knights’ trade. Flames burned high in a wide stone fireplace, the golden light rippled over the water of a star-shaped well in the opposite corner of the room. The Knights were kneeling around the edge. The well had a shallow inner shelf and Elizabeth knew they would have placed the Sistrin pearl on that ledge, in its natural element of water. They were waiting for the jewel to exert its magic and reflect the future in the crystal mirror.
Light fractured from the crosses each man wore, some silver, some a soft rose gold that seemed to glow with a radiance of its own. Elizabeth could see the mirror in Frederick’s hand, the diamonds shining with the same dark fire as the crosses. She did not look at the reflection in the glass itself. She feared the mirror’s visions.
The heat was overpowering and the air laden with smoke and the sweet-woody scent of frankincense. The sun, moon and stars on the knights’ robes seemed to spin before her eyes. Her head ached sharply. Caught off guard, Elizabeth took a step back. She put out a hand to steady herself against one of the stone pillars but met thin air.
Someone caught her from behind, his hand over her mouth, one arm about her waist, pulling her out of the room, swinging the door shut behind them. It was sudden and shocking; no one touched the Queen, least of all manhandled her. Instinct took over; instincts she did not know she possessed. She bit down hard, tasting the tang of leather against her tongue, and he released her at once, though the bite could not have hurt and nor could her feeble attempts to lash out with boots or elbows.
‘Hellcat.’ His voice was deep and he sounded amused, as though her puny efforts were pitiful. She was the one who was angry and she allowed herself to indulge in it.
‘You fool.’ She spun around to face him. She was shaken, ruffled, more than she ought to have been. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
She saw his eyes widen, hazel eyes, which held more than a hint of laughter. In the flaring torchlight she could see he was of no more than average height, which still made him several inches taller than she. He looked strong though, and durable. His hair was a rich chestnut, curling over the white lace of his collar, his nose straight, a cleft in his chin. And even in this moment of stupefaction, even as he recognised her, there was still amusement in his face rather than the deference he should be showing her.
‘Your Majesty.’ He bowed.
She waited, haughty. His lips twitched.
‘Forgive me,’ he said smoothly, after a moment. Nothing more, and it did not sound like a request, still less like an apology.
He was young, this man, a good deal younger than she was, possibly no more than two- or three-and-twenty. Elizabeth thought she recognised him, though she did not know his name. She could see he was a soldier not a courtier. Unlike the Knights of the Rosy Cross he was clad plainly in shirt, breeches, cloak and boots. There was a sword at his side and a knife in his belt.
Heat and sudden tiredness hit her again, making her sway. Perhaps her ladies had been right, damn them. She was six months pregnant and should have been resting.
The expression in his eyes changed from amusement to concern. He took her hand, drawing her forwards.
‘Come into the guardroom—’
‘No!’ She hung back. ‘I don’t want anyone to see me …’
‘There is no one here but me.’
She allowed him to usher her through the door into the small chamber. It was Spartan, with a bare floor and one candle on a battered table. A meagre fire glowed in the grate. It was no place for a Queen but there was a chair, hard and wooden, and Elizabeth sank down onto it gratefully.
‘You are guarding the ceremony alone?’ she asked.
‘I am.’ He looked rueful. ‘Badly, it would seem.’
She smiled at that. ‘You could not have anticipated this.’
‘That the Queen herself would choose to come and watch?’ He shrugged, half-turning aside to pour her a cup of water from the carafe on the table. ‘I suppose not.’
‘I am a member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I have every right to be here.’
His hand stilled. He turned back, dark brows raised. ‘Then why not exercise that right openly? Why creep in like a thief?’
Few things surprised Elizabeth these days. Few people challenged her. It was one of the privileges of royal blood, to be unquestioned. ‘Never explain, never complain’ was an adage that her mother, fair, frivolous Anne of Denmark, had taught her. This man evidently thought that a commoner might question a queen.
All the same she chose to ignore his question, tasting the water he passed her instead, which was warm and brackish but not altogether unpleasant.
‘I don’t believe I know you,’ she said.
He bowed again. ‘William Craven. Entirely at your service.’
Many men had said those words to her over the years. The court was crowded with young men such as this William Craven; men who dedicated themselves and their swords to her service. She knew that some saw her as a princess in distress, others as a martyr to the Protestant cause, unfailingly courageous in the face of adversity. Sometimes she wanted to tell them that there was no place for romantic gallantry in either war or politics. The years of exile had taught her that war was brutal and dangerous, and that politics were corrupt and ground on tediously slowly. But of course she never said so. They all maintained the pretence.
‘Lord Craven,’ she said. ‘Of course. I have heard much about you.’
His mouth turned down at the corners. ‘I too have heard what men say about me at the court.’
She met his gaze very directly. ‘What do they say?’
He smiled ruefully and she saw the lines deepen around his eyes and drive a crease down one lean cheek. He still looked young, but not as young as before. ‘That my father was a shop-keeper and my grandfather a farm labourer; that I bought my barony; that I owe my place in the world to my father’s money and your brother’s need for it.’ Despite his ruefulness he sounded comfortable with the malice. Or perhaps he had heard it so many times before that it had ceased to sting.
‘Charles is perennially in need of money,’ Elizabeth said. ‘As am I myself.’
Craven’s eyes widened at that, then he laughed, deep and appreciative. ‘Plain dealing,’ he said. ‘From a queen. That is uncommon.’
So they had both surprised the other.
Elizabeth put the cup of water down on the flagstone by her chair. ‘What I actually meant was that I had heard Prince Maurice speak highly of your talents as a soldier. He said you are loyal and courageous.’
Craven shifted, the table creaking as he leaned his weight against it. ‘Prince Maurice said I was reckless,’ he corrected gently. ‘It’s not the same.’
‘He spoke of your bravery and skill,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Take the compliment when it is offered, Lord Craven.’
He inclined his head although she was not sure whether it was simply to hide the laughter brimming in his eyes. ‘Majesty.’
There was no doubt, the man lacked deference. As the grandson of a farm labourer he should not have had a manner so easy it bordered on insolence. Yet Elizabeth found she liked it. She liked the way he did not flatter and fawn.
The silence started to settle between them. It felt comfortable. She knew she should go before the ceremony ended; before Frederick came looking for her. She had told him she wanted no part of the ceremony tonight and to be found here would invite questions. Yet still she did not move.
‘You are not one of the Order?’ she asked, gesturing towards the door to the water chamber.
He shook his head. ‘Merely a humble squire. I don’t believe—’ He broke off sharply. For the first time she sensed constraint in him.
‘You don’t believe in the principles of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘You don’t believe in a better world, in seeking universal harmony?’
His face was half-shadowed, his expression difficult to read. ‘Such ambitions seem worthy indeed,’ he said slowly, ‘but I am a simple man, Your Majesty, a soldier. How might this universal harmony be achieved?’
Ten years earlier, Elizabeth might have told him it would be through the study of the wisdom of the ancient past, through philosophy and science. She had believed in the cause then, believed that they might build a better world. But the words were hollow to her now, as was the promise that the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross had held for the future.
‘… Scrying in the waters.’ Craven’s voice drowned out the clamour of her memories. He sounded disapproving. ‘Sometimes it is better not to know what the future holds.’
Elizabeth agreed with that. If she had known her future ten years ago she was not sure she would have had the strength to go forwards towards it.
‘The Knights have powerful magic.’ She could not resist teasing him. ‘They can read secret thoughts. They can pass through locked doors. They can even turn base metal into gold.’
She thought she heard him snort. ‘As the son of a merchant, I know better than most how gold is made and it is not from base metal.’
Their eyes met. Elizabeth smiled. The silence seemed to hum gently between them, alive with something sharp and curious.
‘Are you wed, Lord Craven?’ she asked on impulse.
Craven looked surprised but no more so than Elizabeth felt. She had absolutely no idea as to why she would ask a near stranger such an impertinent question
‘No, I am not wed,’ Craven answered, after a moment. ‘There was a betrothal to the daughter of the Earl of Devonshire—’ He stopped.
A Cavendish, Elizabeth thought. He looked high indeed for the son of a merchant. But then if he was as rich as men said he would be courted on all sides for money, whilst those who sought it sniped at his common ancestry behind his back.
‘What happened?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I preferred soldiering.’
‘Poor woman.’ Elizabeth could not imagine being dismissed with a shrug and a careless sentence. That was not the lot of princesses. If they were not beautiful men pretended that they were. If they were fortunate enough to possess beauty, charm and wit then poets wrote sonnets to them and artists had no need to flatter them in portraits. She had lived with that truth since she was old enough to look in the mirror and know she had beauty and more to spare.
‘Soldiering and marriage don’t mix,’ Craven said bluntly.
‘But a man needs an heir to his estates,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Especially a man with a fortune as great as yours.’
‘I have two brothers,’ Craven said. His tone had eased. ‘They are my heirs.’
‘It’s not the same as having a child of your own,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Do not all men want a son to follow them?’
‘Or a daughter,’ Craven said.
‘Oh, daughters …’ Elizabeth’s wave of the hand dismissed them. ‘We are useful enough when required to serve a dynastic purpose, but it is not the same.’
His gaze came up and caught hers, hard, bright, challenging enough to make her catch her breath. ‘Do you truly believe that? That you are the lesser sex?’
She had never questioned it.
‘I heard men say,’ Craven said, ‘that King Charles believes he gets better sense from you, his sister, than from his brother-in-law.’
Insolence again. But Elizabeth was tempted into a smile.
‘Perhaps my brother is not a good judge of character,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you should value yourself more highly, Majesty.’ His gaze released hers and she found she could breathe again.
‘History demonstrates the truth.’ Craven had turned slightly away, settling the smouldering log deeper into the fire with his booted foot. ‘Your own godmother, the Queen of England, was a very great ruler.’
‘I think sometimes that she was a man,’ Elizabeth said.
Craven looked startled. Then he gave a guffaw. ‘In heart and spirit perhaps. Yet there are plenty of men lesser than she. My father admired her greatly and he was the shrewdest, hardest judge of character I know.’ He refilled the cup with water; offered it to her. Elizabeth shook her head.
‘Did not the perpetrators of the Gunpowder Treason intend for you to reign?’ Craven said. ‘They must have believed you could be Queen of England.’
‘I would have been a Catholic puppet.’ Elizabeth shuddered. ‘Reign, yes. Rule, most certainly not.’
‘And in Bohemia?’
‘Frederick was King,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I was his consort.’ She smiled at him. ‘You seek to upset the natural order of things, Lord Craven, by putting women so high.’
‘Craven!’ The air stirred, the door of the chamber swung open and Frederick strode in, his cloak of red swirling about him. In contrast to Craven, austere and dark, he looked as gaudy as a court magician. Craven straightened, bowing. Elizabeth felt odd, bereft, as though some sort of link between them had been snapped too abruptly. Craven’s attention was all on Frederick now. That was what it meant to rule, even if it was in name only. Frederick demanded and men obeyed.
‘The lion rises!’ Frederick was more animated than Elizabeth had seen him in months. Melancholy had lifted from his long, dark face. His eyes burned. Elizabeth realised that he was so wrapped up in the ceremony that he was still living it. He seemed barely to notice her presence let alone question what she was doing alone in the guardroom with his squire. He drew Charles Louis into the room too and threw an arm expansively about his heir’s shoulders.
This is our triumph, his gesture said. I will recapture our patrimony.
‘The lion rises!’ Frederick repeated. ‘We will have victory! I will re-take Heidelberg whilst the eagle falls.’ He clapped Charles Louis on the shoulder. ‘We all saw the visions in the mirror, did we not, my son? The pearl and the glass together prophesied for us as they did in times past.’
A violent shiver racked Elizabeth. The mirror and the pearl had shown Frederick a war-torn future. She remembered the flames reflected in the water, turning it the colour of blood.
‘The lion is the Swedish king’s emblem,’ she said. It was also Frederick’s heraldic device but she thought it much more likely that it would be Gustavus Adolphus whose fortunes would rise further whilst Frederick would lie where he had fallen, unwanted, ignored. He was no solider. He could not lead, let alone re-take his capital.
She caught Craven’s gaze and realised that he was thinking exactly the same thing as she. There was a warning in his eyes though; Frederick was frowning, a petulant cast to his mouth.
‘It was my emblem,’ he said, sounding like a spoilt child. ‘It was my lion we saw.’
Craven was covering Elizabeth’s tactlessness with words of congratulation.
‘Splendid news, Your Majesty,’ he said smoothly. ‘Do you plan to raise an army to join the King of Sweden’s forces immediately?’
‘Not now!’ Elizabeth said involuntarily. The room seemed cold of a sudden, a wind blowing through it, setting her shivering. Her hand strayed to her swollen belly. ‘The baby …’ she said.
Frederick’s face was a study in indecision. ‘Of course,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I must stay to see you safely delivered of the child, my dear.’ His kiss on her cheek was wet, clumsy. It felt as though his mind was already far away. ‘I will write to his Swedish Majesty and prepare the ground,’ he said. ‘There is much to plan.’
The cold inside Elizabeth intensified. She tried to tell herself it was only the shock of their fortunes changing after so many impotent years, but it felt deeper and darker than that. She knew with a sharp certainty that Frederick should not go. It was wrong, dangerous. Although she had not seen the future, she felt as though she had. She felt as though she had looked into the mirror and seen into the heart of grief and loss, seen a landscape that was terrifyingly barren.
‘The winter is no time for campaigning,’ Craven was watching her face. There was a frown between his brows. ‘Besides, there is much to do before we may leave. Troops to send for, supplies to arrange.’ He stopped, started again. ‘Your Majesty—’
Elizabeth realised that he was addressing her. The grip of the darkness released her so suddenly she almost gasped. It felt like a lifting of a curse; she was light-headed.
‘We should get you back to the palace, madam,’ Craven said. ‘You must be tired.’
‘I am quite well, thank you, Lord Craven,’ Elizabeth snapped. She was angry with him. She had thought she had seen something different in him, yet here he was fawning over Frederick like every other courtier she had known. And for all his compliments to her earlier, he spoke to her now as though she were as fragile and inconsequential as any other woman.
Immediately his expression closed down. ‘Of course, Majesty.’
‘Frederick,’ Elizabeth said. ‘If I might take your arm …’
Frederick was impatient. Elizabeth could feel it in him, in the deliberation with which he slowed his steps to help her up the spiral stair, in the tension in the muscles of his arm beneath her hand. He wanted to be back at the Wassenaer Hof, writing letters, planning a conqueror’s return to Germany. She held him back, with her pregnant belly and her woman’s fears. He was solicitous of her, masking his irritation with concern, but she had known him too long to be fooled. War was coming and that was man’s work.
Charles Louis trailed along behind them through the scented garden, scuffing his boots in the gravel, his expression sulky. He appeared to have caught none of his father’s excitement. Elizabeth could hear Craven talking to him. Their voices were too low for her to hear the words, but soon Charles Louis’ tone lifted into animation again. His quicksilver volatility was not easy to control and Elizabeth admired the way Craven had been able to distract him.
The Knights of the Rosy Cross had gone. The gardens were empty; a checkerboard of moon and shadow. Frederick was still talking, of the fall of the city of Leipzig to Gustavus Adolphus, of the destruction of his hated enemy the Spanish general Tilly, of the visions in the mirror, the lion rampant, the walls of Heidelberg rising again, of their future, suddenly so bright.
Elizabeth crushed her doubts and followed her husband into the Wassenaer Hof. The light enveloped them; for a second there was a hush and then Frederick’s blazing enthusiasm seemed to flare like a contagion through the crowds of courtiers and everyone was talking at once, laughing, lit by feverish excitement even though they did not know why they were celebrating. It was then that the cold came back to her, like the turning of a dark tide, setting her shaking so that she had to clutch the high back of one of the chairs to steady herself. The wood dug into her fingers, scoring the skin.
Frederick had not noticed. He was too busy thrusting his way through the crowd, turning to answer men’s questions. It was Craven who was watching, Craven who gestured impatiently for some of her women to come forwards to help her.
‘Lord Craven.’ Elizabeth put her hand on Craven’s arm to halt him when he too would have hurried away.
‘Madam?’ She could not read his expression.
‘You are an experienced soldier.’ Elizabeth spoke abruptly. ‘Watch over my husband for me. Keep him safe. He does not know how …’ She stopped before she betrayed herself, betrayed Frederick, too far, biting back the words on her tongue.
He does not know how to fight.
‘Majesty.’ Craven bowed, his expression still impassive.
‘Thank you,’ Elizabeth said.
He took her hand in his, kissed it. It was a courtier’s gesture, not that of a soldier. His touch was warm and very sure.
He released her, bowed again. She watched him stride away through the throng of people. He did not look back.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_5b63dfce-e0cf-5188-94ad-b2eb9fa3c907)
London, the present day.
Holly was asleep when the call came through on her mobile. She had been working all day and most of the evening on pieces for her latest collection of engraved glass and she was exhausted. She had left her little mews studio and workshop at ten o’clock, had grabbed a quick sandwich and gone to bed.
She swam up from the depths of a dream, groping for the phone that lay on the bedside table. The bright light of the screen made her wince. Normally she switched it off overnight, but she must have forgotten. She and Guy had been quarrelling over her work again. He had stomped off to the spare room, slamming the door, making a theatrical performance of his annoyance. Usually, Holly would have lain awake and fretted that they were arguing again. Just now she was too damned tired to care.
The icon on the screen was her brother’s picture. The time was two seventeen in the morning. The phone rang on and on.
Frowning, Holly pressed the green button to answer. ‘Ben? What on earth are you doing calling at this time—’
‘Aunt Holly?’ The voice at the other end of the line was already talking, high-pitched and breaking with fear, the words lost between sobs and gulps. It was not Ben but his six-year-old daughter, Florence.
‘Aunt Holly, please come! I don’t know what to do. Daddy’s disappeared and I’m on my own here. Please help me! I—’
‘Flo!’ Holly sat up, reaching for the light, her hand slipping in her haste as her niece’s terror seeped into her consciousness and set her heart pounding. ‘Flo, wait! Tell me what’s happened. Where’s Daddy? Where are you?’
‘I’m at the mill.’ Florence was crying. ‘Daddy’s been gone for hours and I don’t know where he is! Aunt Holly, I’m scared! Please come—’ The line crackled, the words breaking up.
‘Flo!’ Holly said again, urgently. ‘Flo—’ But there was nothing other than the rustle and hiss of the line and then a long, empty silence.
‘Are you mad?’
Guy had emerged from the spare room two minutes previously wearing only his crumpled boxer shorts, bleary-eyed, his hair standing on end in bad-tempered spikes.
‘You can’t shoot off to Wiltshire at this time of night,’ he said. ‘What a bloody stupid idea.’
‘It’s Oxfordshire,’ Holly said automatically. She checked the clock, pulling on her boots at the same time. The zip stuck. She wrenched it hard. Two twenty-seven. She had already wasted ten minutes.
She had rung back repeatedly but there had been no reply. The mill house, Ben and Natasha’s holiday cottage, did not have a landline and the mobile reception had always been patchy. You had to be standing in exactly the right place to get a signal.
‘Have you tried Tasha’s mobile?’ Guy asked.
‘She’s working abroad somewhere.’ Ben had told her but Holly couldn’t remember exactly where. ‘I left her a message.’ Tasha had a high-powered job with a TV travel show and was frequently away.
‘Ben’s probably turned up again by now.’ Guy sat down next to her on the bed, putting what she supposed was meant to be a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘Look, Hol, don’t panic. I mean maybe the kid got it wrong—’
‘Her name’s Florence,’ Holly said tightly. It irritated the hell out of her that Guy seldom remembered any of her family or friends’ names, mostly because he didn’t try. ‘She sounded terrified,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do?’ She swung around fiercely on him. ‘Leave her there alone?’
‘Like I said, Ben will have turned up by now.’ Guy smothered a yawn. ‘He probably crept out to meet up with some tart, thinking the kid was asleep and wouldn’t notice. I know that’s what I’d be doing if I was married to that hard-faced bitch.’
‘I daresay,’ Holly said, not troubling to hide the edge in her voice. ‘But Ben’s not like you. He—’ She stopped. ‘Ben would never leave Flo on her own,’ she said.
She stood up. The terrified pounding of her heart had settled to an anxious flutter now, but urgency still beat through her. Two thirty. It would take her an hour and a half to get to Ashdown if there was no traffic. An hour and a half when Flo would be alone and fearful. The terror Holly had felt earlier tightened in her gut. Where the hell was Ben? And why had he not taken his phone with him wherever he had gone? Why leave it in the house?
She racked her brains to remember their last phone conversation. He’d told her that he and Florence were heading to the mill for a long weekend. He’d taken a few days off from his surgery in Bristol. It was the early May Bank Holiday.
‘I’m doing some family history research,’ he’d said, and Holly had laughed, thinking he must be joking, because history of the family or any other sort had never remotely interested her brother before.
She was wasting time.
‘Have you seen my car keys?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Guy followed her into the living room, blinking as she snapped on the main light and flooded the space with brightness.
‘Jesus,’ he said irritably, ‘Now I’m wide awake. You’re determined to ruin my night.’
‘I thought,’ Holly said, ‘that you might come with me.’
The genuine surprise on his face told her everything she needed to know.
‘Why go at all?’ Guy said gruffly, turning away. ‘I still don’t get it. Just call the police, or a neighbour to go over and check it out. Isn’t there some old friend of yours who lives near there? Fiona? Freda?’
‘Fran,’ Holly said. She grabbed her keys off the table. ‘Fran and Iain are away for a couple of days,’ she said. ‘And the reason I’m going—’ she stalked up to him, ‘is because my six-year-old niece is alone and terrified and she called me for help. Do you get it now? She’s a child. She’s frightened. And you’re suggesting I go back to bed and forget about it?’
She picked up her bag, checking for her purse, phone, and tablet. The rattle of the keys had brought Bonnie, her Labrador retriever, in from her basket in the kitchen. She looked wide-awake, feathery tail wagging.
‘No, Bon Bon,’ Holly said. ‘You’re staying—’ She stopped; looked at Guy. He’d forget to feed her, walk her. And anyway, it was comforting to have Bonnie with her. She grabbed Bonnie’s food from the kitchen cupboard and looped her lead over her arm.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’ In the doorway she paused. ‘Shall I call you when I know what’s happened?’ she asked Guy.
He was already disappearing into the bedroom, reclaiming the space she had left. ‘Oh, sure,’ he said, and Holly knew she would not.
Holly rang Ben’s number every couple of minutes but there was never any reply, only the repeated click of the voicemail telling her that Ben was unavailable and that she should leave a message. Eventually that stopped, too. There was no return call from Tasha, either. Holly wondered about calling her grandparents in Oxford. They were much closer to Ashdown Mill and to Florence than she was, though the car was eating up the miles of empty road. The mesmerising slide of the streetlights was left behind and there was nothing but darkness about her now as she drove steadily west.
In the end she decided not to call Hester and John. She didn’t want to give either of them a heart attack, especially when there might be no reason to worry. Even though she was furious with Guy, she knew he might be right. Ben could have returned by now and Florence might be fast asleep again and, with the adaptability of a child, have forgotten that she had even called for help.
Holly had not wanted to call the police for lots of reasons ranging from the practical – that it could be a false alarm – to the less morally justifiable one of not wanting to cause problems for her brother. She and Ben had always protected each other, drawing closer than close after their parents had been killed in a car crash when Holly was eleven and Ben thirteen. They had looked out for each other with a fierce loyalty that had remained fundamentally unchanged over the years. Their understanding of each other was relaxed and easy these days, but just as close, just as deep. Or so Holly had thought before this had happened, leaving her wondering what the hell her brother was up to.
She pushed away the unwelcome suspicion that there might be things about Ben that she neither knew nor understood. Guy had planted the seed of doubt, but she crushed it angrily; she did know that Ben and Tasha were going through a bad patch but she could not imagine Ben being unfaithful. He simply wasn’t the type. Even less could she imagine him neglecting his child. There had to be some other reason for his disappearance, if he had actually vanished.
But there was Florence, who was only six, and she had been alone and terrified. So it was an easy decision in the end. Holly had called the local police, keeping her explanation as short and factual as possible, sounding far calmer than she had felt. If anything happened to Florence and she had not done her best to help, she would have failed Ben as well as her niece.
The sign for Hungerford flashed past, surprising her. She was at the turn already. It was twelve minutes to four. Ahead of her the sky was inky dark, but in her rear-view mirror she thought she could see the first faint light of a spring dawn. Perhaps, though, that was wishful thinking. The truth was that she didn’t feel comfortable in the countryside. She was a city girl through and through, growing up first in Manchester and then in Oxford after her parents had died, moving to London to go to art college and staying there ever since. London was a good place for her glass-engraving business. She had a little gallery and shop in the mews adjoining the flat, and a sizeable clientele.
At the motorway roundabout she turned right towards Wantage then left for Lambourn. She knew the route quite well, but the road looked deceptively different when the only detail she could see was picked out in her headlights. There were curves and turns and shadowed hollows she did not recognise. She was heading deep into the countryside now. A few isolated cottages flashed past, shuttered and dark. She took the right turn for Lambourn and plunged down into the valley, the car’s lights illuminating the white-painted wooden palings of the racehorse gallops that ran beside the road. The little town was silent as she wove her way through the narrow streets. As the stables and houses fell away and the fields rolled back in, Holly had the same feeling she always had on approaching Ashdown; a sense of expectancy she had never quite understood, a feeling of falling back through time as the dark road opened up before her and the hills swept away to her right, bleak and empty, crowned with a weathercock.
She and Ben had raced up to the top of Weathercock Hill as children, throwing themselves down panting in the springy grass at the top, staring up at the weather vane as it pierced the blue of the sky high above. The whole place had felt enchanted.
Ben. Her chest tightened again with anxiety. She was almost there. What would she find?
The lights picked out a huge advertising hoarding by the side of the road. The words flashed past before she could make out more than the first few:
‘Ashdown Park, a select development of historic building conversions …’
Trees pressed close now to the left, rank upon rank of them like an army in battle order. There was a moment when the endless wood fell back and through the gap in the trees Holly thought she saw a gleam of white; a house standing tall and foursquare with the moonlight reflecting off the glass in the cupola and silvering the ball on the roof. A moment later and the vision had gone. The woods closed ranks, thick and forbidding, swallowing the house in darkness.
The left turn took her by surprise and she almost missed it even though she had come this way so many times before. She bumped along the single-track road, past a bus stop standing beside the remains of the crumbling estate wall. The old coach yard was off to the left; it seemed that this was where the majority of the building work was taking place, behind the high brick-and-sarsen wall. Even in the dark Holly could see the grass verge churned up by heavy machinery and the crouching shadow of a mechanical digger. There was another sign here, a discreet one in cream with green lettering, giving the name of the developers and directing all deliveries back to the site office on the main road.
The lane turned left again, running behind the village now, climbing towards the top of the hill. A driveway on the right, a white-painted gatepost flaking to wood beneath and a five-barred gate wedged open by the grasses and dandelions growing through it.
Ashdown Mill.
She stopped on the gravel circle in front of the water mill and turned off the engine. Bonnie gave a little, excited bark. Holly could hear the thud of her tail as the dog waited impatiently to jump out of the back. There were two other cars on the gravel, a small saloon car and Ben’s four-by-four. The exhaustion and relief hit Holly simultaneously. Her shoulders ached with tension. If Ben was here and it had all been a big misunderstanding she would kill him.
She opened her door and slid out, her legs stiff, an ache low in her back. Outside the car the air had a pre-dawn chill to it. The daylight was growing slowly, trickling through the trees and washing away the moon.
Bonnie was running around with her nose to the ground, released from the captivity of the car, a bounce in her step. She chased around the side of the whitewashed mill and disappeared from view. Holly slammed the car door and hurried after her, pushing open the little gate in the picket fence and running up the uneven stone path to the door, calling for Bonnie as she went.
All the lights were on inside the mill. The door opened before she reached it.
‘Ben!’ she burst out. ‘What the hell—’
‘Miss Ansell?’ A uniformed policewoman stood there. ‘I’m PC Marilyn Caldwell. We spoke earlier.’ She had kind eyes in a pale face pinched with tiredness, and there was something in her voice that warned Holly of bad news. Her heart started to thump erratically again. A headache gripped her temples.
She noticed that one of the door panels was splintered and broken.
‘We had to break it to get in.’ There was a note of apology in PC Caldwell’s voice. ‘The handle is too high for Florence to reach.’
‘Yes.’ Holly remembered that the door had a heavy, old-fashioned iron latch. So Ben had not been there when the police had arrived and there was no sign of him now. Her apprehension was edged with something deeper and more visceral now.
She fought back the terror; breathed deeply.
‘Is Florence OK?’
‘She’s fine.’ Marilyn Caldwell laid a reassuring hand on Holly’s arm. She shifted a little so that Holly could see through into the mill’s long living room. Florence was sitting on the sofa next to another female police officer. They were reading together, although Florence’s eyes were droopy with tiredness and puffy with her earlier tears.
Holly’s heart turned over to see her. She took an involuntary step forwards. ‘Can I go to her, please—’
‘Just a moment.’ The note in PC Caldwell’s voice stopped her. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t found your brother, Miss Ansell.’ She was looking at Holly with forensic detachment now. ‘We’ve searched the house and the woods in the close vicinity, also all the roads nearby. There’s no sign.’
Holly was taken aback. Fear fluttered beneath her breastbone again. This was not right.
‘Is that Dr Ansell’s car outside?’ PC Caldwell asked.
‘Yes.’ Holly rubbed her tired eyes. ‘He can’t have driven anywhere.’
‘Perhaps a friend came to pick him up,’ PC Caldwell suggested. ‘Or he walked to meet someone.’
‘In the middle of the night?’ Holly said. ‘Without his phone?’
PC Caldwell’s expression hardened. ‘It’s hardly unknown, Miss Ansell. I imagine he thought Florence was asleep and slipped out. Perhaps he’s lost track of the time.’
‘That would be ridiculously irresponsible.’ Holly felt furious and tried to rein herself in. She was tired, worried. She had driven a long way. She needed to calm down. Evidently PC Caldwell thought so too.
‘We fully expect Dr Ansell to turn up in the morning,’ she said coldly. ‘When he does, please could you let us know? We’d like to have a word.’
‘You’ll have to stand in line,’ Holly said. Then: ‘I’m sorry. Yes, of course. But …’ Doubt and fear stirred within her again. The emotions were nebulous but strong. Her instinct told her that Ben had not simply walked out.
‘He left his phone,’ she said. ‘And all his stuff’s scattered about. It doesn’t look as though he planned to go out.’
PC Caldwell was already signalling discreetly to her colleague that it was time to leave. She seemed completely uninterested.
‘We’ve traced Mrs Ansell,’ she said. ‘She’s on her way back from Spain but might not make it until tomorrow night. Apparently she’s been,’ she checked her note pad, ‘helicopter skiing in the Pyrenees?’ She sounded doubtful.
‘Very probably,’ Holly said dryly. ‘Tasha works for a travel show – Extreme Pleasures?’
‘Oh yes!’ Marilyn Caldwell’s face broke into a smile. ‘Wow! Natasha Ansell. Of course! How exciting. Well—’ She stopped, realising that the situation did not really merit celebrity chit-chat. ‘We’ll be back tomorrow,’ she said. She turned on an afterthought. ‘Do you know what your brother was doing here, Miss Ansell?’
‘It’s his holiday cottage,’ Holly said. ‘We co-own it.’ She rubbed her eyes again, feeling the grittiness of them. Suddenly she was so tired she wanted to sleep where she was standing. ‘He was down here with Flo whilst Tasha was away working,’ she said. ‘He said he was doing some research. Family history. It’s quiet here. A good place to think.’
PC Caldwell nodded. ‘Right,’ she said. Holly could see her wondering how on earth someone as glamorous as Tasha could be mixed up in a messy situation like this with a man whose idea of fun was family history research.
‘Well,’ the policewoman said. ‘We’ll call back to chat to Mrs Ansell tomorrow.’
I bet you will, Holly thought.
She felt utterly furious, livid with PC Caldwell for being more interested in Tasha’s fame than in Ben’s disappearance, angry that Tasha hadn’t even bothered to ring her to make sure it was OK for her to look after Flo until she got back, and most annoyed of all with Ben for vanishing without a word. The anger helped her, because behind it the fear still lurked, the sense that something was wrong and out of kilter, that Ben would never voluntarily disappear leaving his daughter alone.
Bonnie, picking up on Holly’s mood, made a soft whickering noise and Holly saw Florence look up from the storybook. Her niece’s eyes lit up to see them and she scrambled from the sofa.
‘Aunt Holly!’ Florence rushed towards her, arms outstretched. ‘You came!’ Holly scooped her up automatically, feeling the softness of Florence’s cheek pressed against hers, inhaling the scent of soap and shampoo. Florence clung like a limpet, her hot tears scalding Holly’s neck. Holly could feel her niece’s fear and desolation and her heart ached for her. Security was such a fragile thing when you were a child. She understood that better than most.
‘Hello Flo,’ she said gently. ‘Of course I came. I’ll always come when you call me. You know that.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’ Florence was wailing. ‘Why has he gone away?’
‘I don’t know,’ Holly said, hugging her tighter. ‘He’ll be back soon. I’m sure of it.’ She wished she were.
Later, when Florence had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, Holly carried her niece upstairs in the pale light of the May dawn and put her gently on the big double bed in the main bedroom with her toy rabbit cuddled up in her arms. Then she went over to the window seat and leaning her head back against the panelled wall, closed her eyes for a moment.
Although as children she and Ben had shared the smaller bedroom next door, this was the room she had been drawn to every time. She loved the way the light poured in from the high windows.
So early, the room was still full of morning shadow. Ben’s stuff was scattered all around; a shirt discarded over the arm of the chair, his watch on the chest of drawers, the bed half-made. It looked as though he had just stepped out for a second and would be back at any moment and that disturbed Holly more than it reassured her. This was all so out of character.
Nostalgia and a feeling almost like grief caught her sharply in her chest. She remembered how, as children, she and Ben would imagine the bed as a flying carpet taking them to faraway lands. They had told each other stories more spectacular, adventurous and exciting than any they had read in books. It had been magical. There had even been a little compartment hidden beneath the cushion on the window seat where they would leave each other secret messages …
The breath stopped in her throat. Softly, so as not to wake Florence, Holly slipped off the seat and lifted the cushion up. The little brass handle she remembered was still there. She pulled. Nothing happened. The box lid seemed wedged shut. She tugged a little harder.
The wood lifted with a scrape that she was afraid for a moment would wake Florence, but the child did not stir. Holly knelt down and peered inside.
There was nothing there except for a receipt for some dry cleaning, a dead spider and a misshapen yellow pebble.
Holly felt an absurd sense of disappointment and loss. What had she imagined – that Ben would have left her a secret message to explain where he had gone? No matter how wrong it felt to her that he had simply vanished into thin air, she had to believe that the police were correct. Come morning Ben would walk in full of anxiety for Flo and apologies and relief, explaining … But here Holly’s imagination failed her. She could not think of a single reason why he would do what he had done.
Eventually, when she felt calm enough, she went and curled up next to Florence on the big double bed. She didn’t sleep but lay listening to Florence’s breathing and felt a little bit comforted. After a while she fell into an uneasy doze, Bonnie resting across her feet.
She was woken some time later by an insistent ringing sound. For a moment she felt happy before the memory of what had happened rushed in, swamping her consciousness. She stumbled from the bed and down the stairs, making a grab for her bag and the phone, wondering if it was Guy calling to see what had happened.
But it wasn’t her mobile that was ringing. She found Ben’s phone halfway down the side of the sofa and pressed the button to answer the call.
‘Dr Ansell?’ It was a voice she didn’t recognise, male, slightly accented, sounding pleasant and business-like. ‘This is Espen Shurmer. My apologies for calling you so early but I wanted to catch you to confirm our meeting on Friday—’
‘This isn’t Ben,’ Holly said quickly. ‘I’m his sister.’
There was a pause at the other end. ‘My apologies again.’ The man sounded faintly amused. ‘If you would be so good as to pass me over to Dr Ansell.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Holly said. ‘He’s not here. I …’ She could feel herself stuttering, still half-asleep. She wasn’t sure why she had answered the call and now she didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m afraid he’s disappeared,’ she blurted out.
This time the silence at the other end of the line was more prolonged. Just when she thought Espen Shurmer had hung up, and was feeling grateful for it, he spoke again.
‘Disappeared? As in you do not know where he is?’ He sounded genuinely interested.
‘Yes,’ Holly said. ‘Last night.’ She was not sure why she was telling this man so much when he was probably no more than a business acquaintance of Ben’s. ‘So I’m afraid I don’t know if he’ll be able to make your meeting … I mean, if he comes back I’ll tell him, but I can’t guarantee he’ll be there …’ She let her voice trail away, feeling an absolute fool.
‘Miss Ansell,’ the man at the other end said, ‘Forgive me for not introducing myself properly. My name is Espen Shurmer and I am a collector of seventeenth-century artefacts, paintings, glass, jewellery …’ He paused. ‘I had arranged to meet your brother on Friday night at 7.30pm after a private view at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He contacted me a couple of weeks ago to request the meeting.’
‘Oh.’ Holly was at a loss. ‘Well, I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Mr Shurmer, but I have no idea what Ben wanted to talk to you about. Actually I’m very surprised he got in touch. Art isn’t really his thing …’ She stopped again, realising she was still babbling even if what she was saying was true. Ben had zero interest in the arts. He had always supported her engraving career and had even bought a couple of her glass paperweights for his surgery, but she had known it had only been because she had made them herself. She had loved him for it but she was under no illusions about his interest in culture.
‘I know what it was that your brother wished to discuss, Miss Ansell,’ Espen Shurmer said. ‘He wanted some information on a certain pearl, a legendary stone of great worth.’
Holly sat down abruptly. ‘A … pearl?’ She said. She thought she had misheard. ‘As in a piece of jewellery? Are you sure? I mean …’ It was possible that Ben might have been buying a gift for Natasha, but she was certain he would have bought a modern piece rather than approaching an antiques collector. Such an idea would never even have crossed his mind.
‘I think we should meet to discuss this,’ the man said, after a moment. ‘It is most important. If your brother is unable to keep the appointment, would you be able to come in his place, Miss Ansell? I should be extremely grateful.’
Holly hadn’t even thought about what would happen beyond the next few hours, let alone on Friday. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Shurmer, but Ben will probably be back by then and anyway, this is nothing to do with me.’
‘Seven thirty at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,’ Shurmer said, cutting in so smoothly she barely noticed the interruption. ‘I should be greatly honoured if you choose to be there, Miss Ansell,’ he added with old-fashioned courtesy.
The line clicked as the call went dead.
Holly put the phone down slowly, found her bag and grabbed her tablet. She typed in the name Espen Shurmer and the time, the date and the name of the Ashmolean Museum. The information came up at once – a lecture and private view of portraits and artefacts from the court in exile of Elizabeth, the Winter Queen, sister of King Charles I, which preceded a major new exhibition starting at the end of May. Espen Shurmer, she read, was a Dutch collector of 17
-century painting and glass, and he had donated a number of items to the museum.
She felt a pang of regret as she closed the tablet. She would have loved to see an exhibition of seventeenth-century artefacts and talk to a renowned expert. But there would be no need. Ben would be back soon, she was sure of it. She had to be sure because there was Flo to console and there were her own fears to fight. The longer Ben was absent, the more those shadows grew like monsters, the fear that Ben would never come back and she would be alone again, totally alone this time, like they had been after their parents had died, only so much worse …
She fought back the panic. It was important to keep busy. She needed to make breakfast for Flo, then they could both take Bonnie for a walk, and by then Ben would be home …
But Ben had not come back by lunchtime when Holly drove down to the deli to fetch sandwiches, nor was he back by three when they came back from another walk in the woods with Bonnie. All day Holly had felt her anxiety rising and squashed it down relentlessly, but it grew inside her, filling the empty spaces, filling her mind so she found it almost impossible to concentrate on anything. When she heard a car coming up the track towards the mill she had to restrain herself from running outside to see if it was Ben.
‘It’s Mummy!’ Flo had none of Holly’s reticence and had bounded up from the painting they had been doing to rush out of the door, Bonnie at her heels. Holly followed them more slowly. She and her sister-in-law had always had a brittle relationship. Ben had been a link between them, but now he was missing, and Holly felt suddenly wary.
Tasha, looking as elegant as though she was stepping onto the catwalk, slammed the door of her little red sports car and came hurrying across the gravel on her vertiginously high heels.
‘What the fuck is all this about?’ She demanded without preamble, meeting Holly by the gate. ‘I’ve had to come all the way back from Spain! Where is he, the stupid bastard?’
Holly blinked. Tasha seemed to notice Flo for the first time and bent down to pick her up. ‘Hello darling.’ She held Flo and her sticky painting fingers a little bit away from her. ‘Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m here now.’ She gave Bonnie a vertical pat, designed as much to push her away as greet her. Tasha was not a pet person.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Holly said.
‘I don’t want to stay,’ Tasha said, taking off her sunglasses and fixing Holly with her big blue eyes. ‘I’m going home to Bristol. I’m not hanging around here waiting for Ben to turn up when he feels like it. Have you got Flo’s bag?’
‘It’s not packed,’ Holly said coldly, ‘since you didn’t let me know you were coming.’ She was too exhausted for tact. She and Tasha had never been close; she had tried to like her sister-in-law but it had proved very difficult.
‘Sorry.’ To Holly’s surprise Tasha seemed to deflate all of a sudden like a pricked balloon. ‘I really do appreciate you coming down, Holly, and looking after Flo. But I’m just so bloody angry! It’s just not on for Ben simply to walk out on all his commitments—’
‘Wait.’ Holly put a hand on Tasha’s arm. ‘What do you mean? Surely you don’t think he’s just upped and gone?’
‘That’s exactly what I think,’ Tasha said fiercely, scrubbing at her eyes. She pushed the dark glasses firmly back down on her nose. ‘He was spending all his spare time down here. He’s probably got another woman, for all I know.’
‘He was doing family history research,’ Holly protested.
Her sister-in-law gave a look of such searing scorn that she blushed.
‘Yeah, and I’m Marilyn Monroe,’ Tasha said.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Holly said. She was so outraged she forgot that Flo was listening, taking it all in with her blue eyes wide, so like her mother’s. ‘Hell, Tasha, you know Ben would never do a thing like that! He’d certainly never leave Flo alone! And besides, where would he go? He’d never disappear without telling anyone!’
‘You mean you think he’d never vanish without telling you,’ Tasha said, a hint of pity in her voice now that set Holly’s teeth on edge. ‘Oh Holly …’ She shook her head. ‘I know you think the two of you are really close but you don’t know Ben that well. Trust me.’ She took Flo’s hand. ‘Come on, sweetie, let’s go and get your stuff.’
Holly watched them walk up the path together and into the mill. Desolation swamped her, along with a terrible fear that her sister-in-law might be right. Secretly she had always believed she knew Ben better than anyone, even his wife. Had Ben hidden the truth of deeper fissures in his marriage? Holly could not believe it.
The sun, sparkling on the millpond, dazzled her eyes. Suddenly she felt close to tears. It felt as though she was trapped in a world where nothing was what it seemed and she was the only one trying to keep a tenuous faith. Beside her, Bonnie stood tense, her head tilted to one side, picking up on her mood once again.
‘Come on, Bon Bon,’ Holly said, suddenly fierce. ‘I know this isn’t right. I don’t care what everyone else says.’
Back in the mill she could hear Tasha moving about upstairs. The floorboards creaked and then Tasha and Flo appeared at the top of the stairs, Flo looking sulky and bumping her suitcase on each step. Tasha had Ben’s holdall in one hand and a cross expression.
‘I’m sure he’ll turn up, Holly,’ she said as she reached the bottom step. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘I know there’s something wrong,’ Holly said doggedly.
‘Look.’ Tasha put the bag down with a thump. ‘Don’t think I don’t understand. I do. You’ve always been a little bit clingy where Ben was concerned, haven’t you?’ Then, before Holly could open her mouth to give her a blistering put down: ‘Oh I understand why. I know about losing your parents and all that, and I don’t mind. Really.’ She gave Holly a little, patronising smile as though she had given Ben full permission to pander to his neurotic sister’s neediness. ‘But this has all happened before, hasn’t it? There was that time when you thought Ben had disappeared and he’d simply gone off for a weekend with his mates.’
Holly’s face flamed. ‘That was years ago and it was totally different!’
Tasha shrugged. ‘Whatever. The truth is you have a rather idealistic view of your big brother and you worry about him rather a lot. My advice would be to calm down. Like I say, he’ll turn up in a few days.’ She glanced around the living room. ‘Send on anything I’ve missed, won’t you,’ she said.
Holly took a deep breath and counted to ten. Then she surreptitiously slid Ben’s phone into her back pocket.
‘Of course I will,’ she said.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_b060f553-b4a0-5426-851e-631c8296cb83)
The mill was as quiet as a sepulchre after Tasha and Flo had gone. The silence was so loud it hurt Holly’s ears. It was three thirty and she felt unbearably weary, but restless at the same time. Time felt irrelevant, suspended. She found she was waiting for her phone to ring or for a knock at the door, or for the sound of a voice, something, anything, that might herald Ben’s return.
She took her phone and went outside to try to get a better signal. She rang Guy’s mobile number but there was no reply. She could not get him on their landline either. He had not called her to find out what had happened or make sure she was OK. The knowledge that he didn’t care seemed unable to hurt her. Nothing penetrated the numbness and isolation that wrapped around her like a shroud.
She thought about ringing her grandparents but she didn’t want to worry them about nothing. She knew that if Ben had been with them he would have been in touch long before now. It was such a strange, frustrating, suspended place in which to find herself, one minute eaten up by worry, the next so furious with her brother she wanted to scream at him. In the end, since no one else seemed to be doing anything she thought the best thing she could do would be to go out and search the woods herself. She needed to be out in the fresh air again. She needed to be active. Claustrophobia pressed down on her. She felt sick. She pulled on her thin fleece jacket and went out, leaving Bonnie, who seemed disinclined for yet another walk, snoring on the sofa.
It was a bright day with a clear blue sky. Holly didn’t really know where to start so she set off down the track to the village, turning right over the bridge, past a bus stop where a girl stood, her long blonde hair blowing in the wind. She looked to be about nineteen, tall, too thin, wrapped in a long stripy scarf, smoking a cigarette and looking bored. She turned her head briefly as Holly walked past and nodded a hello, then dropped the cigarette and ground it out beneath her shoe.
The crumbling estate wall rose on Holly’s left and behind it was the old coach yard. This was where the majority of the building work was taking place, and Holly could hear the whine and bleep of a mechanical digger.
A hundred yards further on was the car park and courtyard where Fran had her deli café and tearoom. A dozen cars were parked in the cobbled yard and an ice cream sign swung by the shop door. Holly thought about dropping in but then she remembered Fran wasn’t back until the morning. She felt odd and disoriented. She had already been into the deli once that day, only a few hours ago, and yet it felt like it had happened weeks ago. She was so tired.
There was a small flyer on the telegraph pole by the side of the road. A dog named Lucky had gone missing and his owners were offering a reward for his safe return. Looking at the sad little furry face, Holly thought she could make up posters of Ben and stick them up about the place. It might jog the memories of people who could have seen him out and about in the woods. After all, he could have gone out for some fresh air and felt ill, or fallen over and knocked himself unconscious, or any number of other accidents. He could have a broken ankle and be unable to hop home. She knew the police had said they had searched the woods in the close vicinity but she suspected it had been a cursory search at best.
Although the sun was warm she felt cold. It took her aback to find the place so busy with bank holiday tourists. For some reason she had expected it to be quiet. She strolled along the path towards the wood, following several groups of visitors, families with children dragging their heels, couples hand in hand. Holly saw them all as though she was looking through one of her pieces of engraved glass, clear but slightly distorted. They ambled with no intent, admiring the view over the Downs where the weathercock pierced the sky and the dreamy curve of the hills broadened to fill the horizon. Holly felt shockingly lonely.
Her phone rang.
‘Hol?’ It was Guy. He sounded hung over. ‘What’s going on? Why the seven thousand calls? What gives?’
‘Ben’s still missing,’ Holly said bluntly. ‘He hasn’t come back since last night.’
‘What?’ Guy sounded puzzled, affronted even. ‘Well where is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ Holly said. ‘That’s the point. No one knows. Tasha says—’ She stopped abruptly but it was too late.
‘He’s got another woman,’ Guy finished. There was glee in his tone. ‘Good for him.’
‘I’m sure she’s wrong,’ Holly said.
Guy ignored that. ‘Are you heading back then?’ He said. ‘If Tasha’s been to pick up the kid—’
‘No,’ Holly said. ‘I’m staying here until Ben turns up.’
There was a silence. ‘What?’ Guy said. ‘Why on earth would you want to hang around?’
‘In case something’s happened to him,’ Holly said. ‘I wondered if you wanted to come down?’ She could hear the plea in her voice and hated herself for it. Whatever Tasha had said, she wasn’t normally so needy, but today it felt as though all her defences had been stripped away. It wasn’t that she particularly wanted Guy, she realised, just company and comfort. She wanted to share the burden of Ben’s disappearance. It was horrible feeling so alone.
She thought she heard Guy swear. ‘Hol,’ he said. ‘You’re over-reacting. Your brother’s not a child. He can take care of himself. For God’s sake come back—’
‘I’m worried,’ Holly said flatly. ‘I know something isn’t right.’
This time Guy definitely did swear. ‘For fuck’s sake, Holly! You’re not his keeper!’
‘Forget it,’ Holly said swiftly. ‘Forget I asked you to come down. And don’t expect me back either.’ She snapped the phone shut, cutting off Guy’s spluttering.
The brief flash of anger had lifted her spirits but they fell again immediately. She felt lost as soon as she stepped into the woods. The canopy of trees closed overhead, shutting her into green darkness. In all directions paths veered off and criss-crossed, losing themselves. She went two hundred yards along one and stopped, realising that she hadn’t even put her walking boots on. She felt tears of frustration and anger well up in her throat. She made her way back down to the road feeling shaky and upset.
What was she trying to do? She was one person trying to prove a point in the face of what seemed like massive indifference. No one else seemed to think that there was anything wrong and it was frightening to be wavering on the edge of believing it herself, thinking she was mad or deluded.
A wedding had just finished at the church by the little stone bridge. As the clock on the tower struck quarter to four, the church door opened and the wedding party spilled out into the churchyard, laughing and talking. Holly paused by the gate. A sudden breeze was plastering the bride’s veil against her lipstick and snatching at the guests’ coats like a demanding child. It picked up the confetti and whirled it around Holly’s head like blossom, and it tugged the bouquet from the bride’s hands, bowling it along the ground to land at Holly’s feet.
Holly bent slowly to pick it up. It was a posy of pink rosebuds, scentless.
Suddenly the wedding guests were all around her and the bride had come hurrying down the flagstone path towards her, laughing.
‘Thank you so much! I don’t know what I’d have done for the photographs otherwise!’
Holly handed the bouquet over, smiling. Her face felt a little stiff, as though it would not bend in the right places. No one seemed to have noticed though. They were all wrapped up in happiness. They didn’t know how out of touch she felt, how cut off. They went back towards the church door, where the photographer tried to arrange them in the neat rows required for the official pictures. At the same time she was aware of a sharp pain lodged beneath her breastbone. She did not begrudge these people their happiness but it made her loneliness feel suddenly unbearably acute.
‘Are you OK?’
Holly blinked. She was not the only onlooker. A man was standing to the side of the lych gate. Youngish, thirty-two or three – she was bad at guessing ages. She felt a flash of recognition, sharp and sure, as though she knew him, but as he came closer she realised that he was a stranger.
He was tall, dark and durable looking in a battered jacket, brown moleskin trousers and boots. His eyes were very dark, as dark as the hair that fell across his brow. An expensive-looking camera hung about his neck. Holly thought he was probably a tourist, out walking in the woods and attracted by the wedding as she had been. She forced a smile.
‘I’m fine, thanks. I just stopped to watch.’
He smiled back, but his dark gaze was keen. ‘If you’re sure? You look a bit … shaken.’
Behind them the group was re-arranging itself for yet another photograph. Holly put her hands in the pockets of the fleece and turned away.
‘Don’t let me stop you taking your pictures—’
The man grinned, obviously recognising the brush-off. ‘The sun’s in the wrong place. Besides, it’s too organised for me. I like spontaneity.’
Holly frowned a little. ‘Spontaneity. Yes. That’s nice. Excuse me …’
She had only gone twenty yards from him when she had to slow down because the tears were running down her face and dropping off her chin, and she couldn’t see where she was going. She felt bewildered and acutely embarrassed. She stumbled a little on the path, heard a step behind her, and felt his hand on her arm.
‘Look, can I help—’
‘No!’ Holly turned and glared at him and his hand dropped to his side. He took a step back.
‘Okay.’ His voice was quiet, oddly soothing. ‘Well … Take care—’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ A shred of conventional manners stirred in Holly and she scrubbed her hands across her face, wiping away the tears. ‘I really didn’t mean to be rude—’
His lips twitched as though he were about to smile. He had a striking face, thin and brown, with high cheekbones and dark, watchful eyes beneath strongly marked brows. Holly found she wanted to go on looking at him.
‘Please don’t apologise,’ he said easily. ‘I’m the one making a nuisance of myself—’
Holly started to cry again. ‘Don’t be so nice about it—’
‘Look, this is silly. Why don’t we go and get a cup of tea until you feel a bit better? There’s a tea room just down the road, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, but—’ Holly felt horribly vulnerable. She didn’t want anyone to see her looking like this. But they were already at the courtyard and he was guiding her to one of the outside tables where she could sit in a corner, partially sheltered from view.
Holly sat down and watched as he went inside, to emerge a few minutes later, carrying two big blue and white striped mugs. The steam from them floated sideways. She wrapped her hands around hers and drank deeply. It was scalding hot, but comforting.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘What do I owe you?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘In case you don’t take tea with complete strangers, my name’s Mark.’
‘Holly.’ She considered shaking hands and decided against it.
‘Nice to meet you, Holly.’ Mark sat back in his chair. ‘So do you want to talk about it?’
‘What?’ She stared at him, confused for a moment. Her eyes were smarting slightly. ‘Oh, no, thank you.’
‘All right.’ Mark said equably.
They sat drinking their tea in silence. Holly appraised him with an artist’s eye; his face was hard lines of cheek and jaw, like a stylised angel … He turned his head and their eyes met and again she felt that jolt of recognition, exciting, dangerous. Normally she would have run a mile from such instant attraction but today she felt different. Everything felt different.
She nodded towards the camera.
‘That’s a nice piece of kit. Did you get any good shots today?’
Mark smiled. ‘Yes, thanks. There’s plenty of potential around here. Are you interested in photography?’
‘Yes, I like it. I take pictures and sometimes I’m lucky. That’s different from being good though.’
Mark inclined his head. ‘So what do you do for a living?’
‘I’m an engraver. Glass.’ Holly realised she didn’t want to talk about herself. ‘What about you? Is photography your job?’
Mark grimaced. ‘Unfortunately not. I’m just an amateur. I used to work as a civil engineer, but I’ve done some travelling lately.’
Holly drained her mug. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘I was working in Asia for a bit, Norway. My sister lives there, so I stayed for the winter, crewing her husband’s fishing boat.’
Holly looked at him in surprise. She had seen enough TV programmes to know that was no job for amateurs.
‘Are you a good sailor then?’
‘No,’ Mark smiled. ‘A very bad one. But I had to do something to pay my way.’ He stood up, a little abruptly and Holly sensed that with him too there were barriers he didn’t want to cross.
‘Are you ready to go? I’ll walk you to your car.’
‘Oh.’ Holly realised he thought she was a tourist too. She hesitated, suddenly aware of how weird she felt. Everything felt odd, distorted in her mind, not quite real.
‘I’m staying near here,’ she said.
‘I’ll walk you back then.’
Holly was not sure that she really wanted company. ‘There’s no need—’
Mark slanted a smile down at her. She liked the lines that fanned out from his eyes when he smiled and the crease that ran down his cheek. She noticed these things about him quite objectively and yet at the same time not objectively at all.
‘I daresay you’d rather be alone,’ he said, ‘but I’d rather know you were OK. Call me over-protective if you like …’ He shrugged. ‘I could walk a few paces behind, if you prefer.’
The breeze was strengthening now and the day cooling down into evening. They left the car park and the tourists behind, passing the tiny village green with its scatter of cottages and the little stream. After all the noise and bustle the silence sounded loud. They did not speak.
Whenever Mark drew a little ahead of her, Holly watched him move; the easy, economical movements of someone comfortable in their own skin. His gaze was abstracted now as it rested on the path ahead, his face a little distant in repose. There was a tight knot in Holly’s stomach as she watched him. It felt a little like pain, but it was something different, hot and fierce, that curled inside her.
At the gate of the mill she stopped. Mark looked up and seemed to register for the first time where they were. He turned towards her, frowning.
‘Are you staying here?’
‘Yes,’ Holly said. ‘Would you like to come in?’
She felt his puzzlement, saw the slight narrowing of his eyes as they rested on her face. Much now depended on his interpretation of the invitation, and she had the feeling that Mark had probably had plenty of practice in that. She shifted slightly, keeping her gaze fixed on his. He was so cool, so distant. She needed to bridge that gap. She needed him. The thought of him turning away now and leaving her was unbearable. She wondered if he could feel her desperation.
He took her hand. His fingers interlocked strongly with hers, and still she did not know the answer and felt quite faint with the need to know. She stepped over the threshold and gently tugged his hand; he followed.
There was a message from Fran on the mat. It said: ‘I’ve just got back. Call me.’
Holly read it upside down, stepped over it and turned back to Mark. She could smell his skin, the faint scent of fresh air. He was cold to the touch. She pulled him inside, slammed the door and reached up to kiss him. After a second he responded and she felt sharp desire and such relief that she trembled. The loneliness, the fear, faded.
She kissed him again, driving out thought, losing herself in sensation, drawing back only so that she could lead him towards the stairs. She could feel his presence behind her, close as a whisper. She was still holding his hand. The late afternoon sun was streaming in at the big bedroom window, , the line of the hills spread out before them. Mark was watching her face.
‘Holly, what’s this about?’
She felt his breath feather across her skin. She could see the shadow of his eyelashes, spiky against the hard line of his cheek. His lips brushed her jaw. Again she felt that fierce rush of desire. She turned her head and Mark’s mouth was suddenly on hers again, one hand tangled in her hair, the other low on her back. Sensation flared. Mark’s hand brushed the thin cotton of her shirt, his palm against her breast. He was still kissing her. Such urgency. She had never even imagined it could be like that and she was fiercely glad; glad she was not alone any more; glad she could forget for a little while. She pulled him down onto the bed beside her and lost herself in him.
There was a distant ringing sound in Holly’s ears. She struggled awake to find the room full of daylight. Her body felt relaxed for the first time in days and her mind was as clear and sharp as a cut in a piece of glass. She could remember every detail of the night. They hadn’t slept much. They hadn’t talked at all.
She turned over. Mark lay beside her, curled on his side, sleeping peacefully. The lines of his face were softened. Something pierced Holly’s detachment and made her breath catch in her throat. She looked at him for a moment, then got out of bed and tiptoed over to the wardrobe. She almost tripped over the clothes piled on the floor. Turning the key in the door she took out an old paisley robe of Ben’s she had borrowed the last time she had come down.
Light was streaming into the long living room and her phone was full of messages. She ignored them. It was the doorbell that was ringing, on and on. Bonnie was agitated, waiting by the door, tail waving. All Holly could think was that if Ben had timed his arrival back now it would be difficult to work out which of them had the more explaining to do.
She opened the door and found Fran on the step, shivering inside her jacket. It was another sunny morning but they were standing in the shade of the building and the shadows were cold.
‘Holly!’ Fran’s eyes were puzzled, her voice full of concern. ‘Thank goodness! I thought you’d disappeared too. Are you ill or something? I heard about Ben—’
‘You already know?’ Holly blinked in shock.
‘The whole village knows,’ Fran said. ‘You can’t keep secrets around here.’ She bit her lip. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I caused a problem for you but when I couldn’t get you last night I called your grandparents. I thought perhaps you might have gone over to Oxford. Oh, and I rang Guy as well. What the hell happened there? He told me you had broken your engagement—’
Normally Holly could cope with Fran’s ramblings but this morning her head hurt. ‘You rang Gran?’ She felt a sick, swooping sensation in her chest. She could not imagine how Hester and John had felt to hear that Ben had vanished and that Fran couldn’t get hold of Holly either. No wonder she had hundreds of messages on her phone. She was surprised they weren’t there, hammering on the door.
Fran’s gaze dropped to her note, still resting on the mat at the bottom of the steps. She frowned. ‘Didn’t you see my message? We’ve been worried about you.’
Holly drew her robe more closely about her throat. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll ring Gran straight away and let her know I’m OK.’
Fran was watching her as though she knew there was something wrong but could not quite work it out. ‘Are you feeling ill? Has it all been too much for you? I’m so, so sorry about Ben. Has there been no word? I just don’t understand it. It’s not like him.’
There was a sound upstairs. Fran started to say something else but Holly spoke quickly.
‘I’d better go and get dressed. I’m really sorry, Fran. I’m feeling a bit weird about it all to be honest. I’ll come and seem you later.’
Fran huddled deeper in her jacket. ‘You poor thing! No wonder you haven’t got up yet. Look, do you want me to come in and make you a cup of coffee? We could talk—’
There was another sound from upstairs, too loud to ignore. Fran frowned. ‘Holly, is somebody here already? What’s going on?’
Holly shivered. ‘Sorry, Fran, it’s not really convenient to talk right now.’
‘Has Ben come back?’ Fran demanded.
‘No,’ Holly said.
‘Then did Guy come down after all? Because last night he said—’
‘No,’ Holly said again.
She saw the moment that the penny dropped in Fran’s mind, the widening of her eyes, the look of comical shock on her face. Fran clapped a hand to her mouth. Her gaze roved over Holly’s tumbled hair, her bare feet. ‘Oh Holly,’ she said, ‘What have you done – Oh my God, you haven’t … Say you haven’t. What’s happened to you? You never do things like that!’
Holly caught her arm urgently. ‘I can’t talk now. Please, Fran, it’s a bit complicated.’
Fran looked torn between stunned horror and concern. ‘Holly, you’re in shock. I’ve read about this. When people go missing their relatives can suffer from something called suspended grief, not knowing whether someone is dead or not—’
‘Thanks, Fran,’ Holly said. Despite herself she could feel a flicker of a smile starting and some sense of normality returning. Fran’s monumental lack of tact had always been cheering rather than anything else. ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ she said. ‘Really, I will. I’ve got things to sort out.’
‘I can imagine,’ Fran said dryly. Then she looked past Holly’s shoulder. Holly saw her expression freeze before Fran rearranged her face into ultra-casual indifference.
‘Mark,’ she said brightly. ‘Hi. How are you?’
Holly spun around. Mark, fully dressed, was standing in the doorway. He nodded to Fran.
‘Hi, Fran.’
Holly felt her stomach dip as though she were on a roller coaster. The previous day she hadn’t spared a single thought for who Mark was or what he was doing at Ashdown. Now, though, she realised that far from being a random tourist who would disappear in the morning, he must live there and would be going precisely nowhere. Her stomach tightened and panic fluttered in her throat.
‘You’ve heard about Ben?’ Fran had waited for Holly to speak and then, when she hadn’t, had rushed in to fill the awkward silence as best she could.
‘Just now,’ Mark said. His gaze was on Holly’s face, dark and inscrutable. ‘What happened?’
‘He’s missing,’ Holly said. ‘He vanished a couple of nights ago.’ It felt ridiculous, surreal, to be standing here like this politely discussing her brother’s disappearance when she had neglected to mention it before.
‘Holly didn’t tell you—’ Fran began, then saw the expression on Holly’s face and gulped. ‘Well, anyway, I’d better …’ She waved her hands about in mute confusion. ‘I’ll be at home later so give me a ring, Holly … Or call round. Whatever.’ She was edging away down the path as she spoke. ‘Take care.’
She hurried off towards the gate and Holly went back inside. Mark stepped back to allow her to pass him. She could feel his gaze on her face and she felt the heat burn beneath her skin. Suddenly the paisley robe felt far too flimsy and she felt far too vulnerable.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, before Mark had the chance to say anything and the situation became even more excruciating. ‘I should have told you, but …’ She stopped. She had no excuses. She couldn’t even connect with how she had felt the day before, how isolated, how desperate she had been not to be alone.
‘That’s OK,’ Mark said. His tone was level but she had an unnerving conviction that he was angry. ‘I knew you were upset, I just didn’t realise—’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry to hear about Ben,’ he added. ‘Are the police looking for him?’
‘No,’ Holly said. ‘They think he’s just gone off somewhere and that he’ll turn up.’ Her eyes were burning and it felt as though something sharp was wedged in her throat. She could not believe how right everything had felt whilst she had been with Mark and how wrong it all felt again now. That was the trouble with forgetting, she thought. It didn’t last long before everything crowded back in worse than before. She should have realised; realised she couldn’t lose herself, realised she couldn’t escape her fears about Ben.
‘I wouldn’t want you to think …’ She stopped. Mark waited. She felt a spurt of anger that he wasn’t making it easy for her.
‘I didn’t mean to use you,’ she said. ‘I don’t usually do this sort of thing.’
Mark shrugged. ‘I heard what Fran said.’ He picked up his jacket off the back of the sofa. ‘Just for the record, neither do I. Except that we both did.’
There was another sharp silence then Mark sighed.
‘I don’t want to leave you if you’re upset,’ he said. ‘Holly, please, talk to me.’
The look in his eyes was gentle and it made Holly feel more angry. She remembered his tenderness the previous night and how she had driven it out with need. She didn’t want it now, either. She couldn’t deal with it.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. She drew the robe tight about her throat. ‘Thanks.’
‘Right,’ Mark said. He reached for the latch pausing for a second as he was about to open the door. ‘It might help to know,’ he said, ‘who you are …’
‘Oh!’ Holly jumped, the colour flooding her face again. ‘Holly Ansell. Ben’s sister.’
‘And who is Guy?’
Holly hesitated a second. ‘Guy is … was … my fiancé.’
She saw Mark’s expression harden. ‘Okay. I get it. Well, I’ll go then.’
Holly didn’t try to stop him. She heard the door slam behind him and felt the silence of the house press in on her. She fumbled on the dresser for her phone. She needed to ring her grandmother. Guilt swamped her. Everything else could wait. She didn’t need to think about it now.
She pressed the button to call her grandparents’ number. Hester answered on the second ring.
‘Gran,’ Holly said. ‘I’m so sorry not to have called before—’ And submitted quietly to her grandmother’s scolding, hearing the fear beneath her words of reproach.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_3e4665b7-832b-56ae-8d0e-e73811413809)
Wassenaer Hof, The Hague, February 1632
The palace was in chaos. Light spilled across the cobbles, torches flared, men hurrying, women calling with an edge of panic to their voices. As William Craven rode through the arched gateway into the courtyard, Dr Rumph, the Queen’s chief physician, loomed up out of the dark and caught his reins, causing the horse to shy. Cursing, Craven brought it under control and Rumph stepped back, his long face growing even longer.
‘Your pardon.’ He spoke stiffly.
‘It’s no matter,’ Craven said. He jumped down and handed the reins over to a groom. It had been a long ride from Frederick’s campaign lodgings at Hanau and he had letters for the Queen but what he wanted most was a meal and some hot water. Judging by the disquiet in Rumph’s face, however, he seemed destined to have neither.
‘What can I do for you, doctor?’ he said.
‘We have lost the Queen!’ Rumph said.
For one shocking moment Craven thought Rumph meant that Elizabeth was dead. It would not be so surprising. The winter had been notably wet and mild, encouraging all manner of fevers, and the Queen had been taken with an ague that had confined her to her bed for several weeks. But then he realised what the doctor meant. The chaos, the men milling around, the air of panicked confusion …
‘Her Majesty has disappeared?’ he said.
‘That is what I’m telling you,’ Rumph snapped.
‘You have searched the palace?’
‘Of course.’ Rumph fell into step beside him, his long black robe flapping agitatedly as he walked. ‘She was last seen in her chamber several hours ago. Her ladies say she was in a melancholy frame of mind. We were afraid …’ He hesitated. No one would articulate it but they feared that the Queen, borne down by fear and loneliness whilst her husband was on campaign, might commit the heinous sin of taking her own life.
‘Nonsense,’ Craven said. It was easy in such a febrile atmosphere to imagine the worst. Rumour spread panic like a contagion. Yet he knew that the Queen would never abandon her cause.
He had left The Hague with Frederick six weeks before and they had made slow progress towards a meeting with the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus at Hochst. During that time Craven had taken a number of letters back and forth between the king and his wife. It had not taken him long to see which of them had the greater heart, spirit and stomach for the fight. Frederick would always be a broken reed. Elizabeth would always be the stronger.
‘Have you searched the gardens?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ Rumph sounded offended to be asked so obvious a question.
‘Stables? Outbuildings?’
Rumph’s look said quite clearly what he thought of the idea of the Queen of Bohemia hiding in an outbuilding.
‘Our Lord took refuge in a stable,’ Craven said mildly, and was rewarded with a glare.
‘You mock the scriptures, my lord?’
‘Of course not,’ Craven said. ‘What about the water tower? Have you looked there?’
There was a pause, a minute hesitation. Craven glanced at the physician. Rumph knew full well what ceremonies had been held in the water tower and disapproved of them. Or perhaps, Craven thought, he was superstitious, scared. Physicians sometimes were. Rumph would not like to think that the Queen would dabble in dangerous occult practices. If it came to it, Craven felt much the same himself, although for different reasons. He deplored the use of magic.
‘The tower is locked,’ the physician said.
‘But the queen would have access to a key.’
Silence.
‘We have not looked there,’ Rumph admitted.
‘Then let us waste no more time.’
By the time they had crossed the garden to the tower they had gained a motley retinue; pages with lanterns, ladies holding up their skirts in order not to dirty them on the gravel, gentlemen with hunting dogs. Craven put his hand to the door of the tower and it swung open silently. He took a torch from one of the servants.
‘I’ll go down alone,’ he said.
The faces around him swam in the flare of light; avid, speculative, malicious. Craven felt a wave of disgust. God protect Her Majesty from such ghoulish curiosity. It was no wonder she sought solitude, surrounded every moment by such a crowd.
Rumph blocked his way. ‘It would not be seemly for you to be alone with the Queen, my lord.’
‘Forgive me, doctor, but His Majesty the King insists no layman should enter the tower that holds the secrets of the Order of the Rosy Cross,’ Craven said, an edge of steel to his tone now. ‘Does anyone wish to gainsay him?’ He let the question hang.
It was enough. A ripple of disquiet went through the crowd like wind through corn. No one wanted to incur the wrath of the Knights of the Rosy Cross. Only Rumph’s face bore indecision.
‘I must insist—’
‘Be assured, sir—’ Craven laid a hand lightly on his arm, ‘that I will call for you at once should Her Majesty be in need of medical assistance.’
He started down the stone stair. There was absolute silence below and darkness that fell about him like a shroud. The air was still and musty. It made him want to sneeze. He could almost feel the layers of dust tightening his chest. This was an unwholesome place. Even if a man did not believe in necromancy and its secrets it was impossible not to feel a shudder of repulsion.
‘Your Majesty!’ His voice sounded loud, met by nothing but the muffling darkness. He reached the bottom of the stairs and carefully opened the door into the water chamber.
There were no knights in black and gold tonight. At first Craven thought the room was completely empty and he felt a rush of relief mingled with respect for Elizabeth that she should not cheapen herself with foolish superstition. Then he saw the torchlight falling on the quiet waters of the pool in banners of orange and black. It glanced off the arched spans of the roof and the tall pillars of stone. Shadows rippled, then one of them formed into a figure, small, slight, kneeling at the side of the pool.
Craven’s heart jumped. He almost dropped the lantern in his haste to reach her side. ‘Your Majesty!’
She made no response, no movement.
‘Madam!’ He dropped down on one knee beside her. He had never thought her a small woman before, yet she seemed as insubstantial as air tonight, a ghost in a white gown, huddled over the water as she wove her spell.
He saw it then, the pearl shimmering on a ledge at the edge of the pool. He felt a deep visceral coldness, as though the marrow were freezing in his bones. It was not fear he felt but anger. Frederick was weak and needed the magic of soothsaying to prop him up. He was its puppet. But Elizabeth should have been too strong to require the comfort of such illusions.
He snatched the pearl from the water and threw it aside. He heard the clatter as it bounced off the stone pillar and wondered if it was lost. He hoped so.
Elizabeth jumped to her feet and spun to confront him. ‘You forget yourself, Craven.’ Her voice cracked like a whip. Her skirts were soaked. Water gleamed on her bare arms. She looked like a creature of magic herself, all light and fire, her hair flowing loose about her shoulders. He had never seen her like this, never expected to see her like this.
‘Who are you to interrupt the mysteries of the Knights of the Rosy Cross?’ Elizabeth demanded.
‘One who would not see you bend to superstition,’ Craven said grimly, adding a perfunctory ‘madam.’ It sounded more derisive than he had intended and he saw her expression harden. For a moment he thought she might strike him.
‘Be careful that you do not trip over your own self-importance,’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘Why should I care about your judgement, milord? You have no education. You are no more than a soldier. I do not need your permission or your approval for what I do.’
‘All men’s opinions matter when a kingdom is at stake,’ Craven said. ‘Do you want the world to think that you cast spells like a witch because you do not believe you will regain your patrimony any other way?’ He straightened up. A glimmer of iridescence caught his eye; in the corner of the chamber the pearl gleamed mockingly. Elizabeth made a rush for it but Craven was before her, grabbing it, holding it out of her reach. As soon as he touched it all colour seemed to leach from it. It looked a dull grey, sulky and malevolent. It was a toy, a chimera. He detested it.
He raised his gaze to Elizabeth’s face. ‘If you call on the pearl they will think you weak,’ he said softly. ‘They will dismiss you as a tool in the hands of the magicians. Or they will seek to burn you for witchcraft.’
Shock flared in her eyes. He had spoken harshly on purpose because he wanted her to understand. The Holy Roman Emperor and his allies would use every means available to discredit her. She was putting herself in danger and suddenly he was fearful for her.
He could feel the tension wrapping about them, thick as cobwebs, and then Elizabeth gave a sigh and her shoulders slumped. She looked so young and vulnerable all of a sudden, fragile in the white gown. The torchlight cast its slanting shade across her cheek and deepened the warm curve of her mouth. Her blue eyes were shadowed and dark. In that instant Craven could see why hard-headed soldiers and romantic fools alike dedicated themselves and their swords to her service. She was both gallant and beautiful.
Craven remembered Ralph Hopton telling him once of how he had carried the pregnant Queen ahead of him on his horse during the retreat from Prague after the Battle of White Mountain, of how she had ridden mile after mile without complaint whilst her husband had shed bitter tears over the loss of his kingdom. Such courage commanded men’s respect as well as their love.
‘Don’t you see – I need certainty?’ He could hear the plea for reassurance beneath Elizabeth’s defiant words. ‘I need to know if Frederick will win,’ she said. ‘I need to know if our lands will be restored or whether …’ She let the words trail away before she betrayed herself too far.
‘You will not find truth in magic, only deception.’ Impatience made him short. Frederick would not win. Craven needed no soothsaying to tell him that. He wanted to be honest with her, to state the facts baldly:
‘Your husband is no soldier and men will die because of him.’
But that was needlessly cruel, and in making her face up to her lack of belief in her husband he would commit an unforgivable act of treachery. Besides, he had chosen his loyalty. He had pledged himself to Frederick’s cause. The least he could do was honour that pledge until he was released from it.
‘Frederick took the mirror with him.’ She spoke softly so that Craven had to draw nearer to hear her words. A fold of her gown brushed his leg. For a moment he smelled the scent of the orange flower perfume she wore. She glanced up at him, almost shy. ‘We agreed; he would have the mirror and I the pearl. Two halves of a whole.’ Her voice dropped still further. ‘They do not work so well apart. The pearl would not reveal itself tonight without the mirror as its foil.’
Craven knew the Winter King had taken the mirror. Barely a day passed without him peering into its depths for some pointer to his future fortunes. It was pitiful. He clenched his fists and, in doing so, realised that he still held the pearl. He resisted the urge to throw it into the pool and let the waters of the Bosbeek wash it away.
There were sounds from above now, footsteps on the stone stairs and the flaring of torches. Clearly Rumph had decided he had been absent long enough and had come to find out what was happening.
‘They are looking for me.’ He saw Elizabeth straighten. She reached for her cloak, smothering the white gown in darkness. Her tone had changed. The doubt, the desolation had gone. She had shown her weakness to him but now she was a queen again.
Her gaze fixed on him, formal now. ‘I did not ask what you were doing here, Lord Craven. I suppose you are come from Hanau with letters from His Majesty?’
‘I am.’ He was put neatly back in his place, a messenger boy.
‘Then present them to me in an hour in the Great Chamber.’
She held out her hand for the jewel.
Craven looked at it again. It was instinctive, that glance downwards. He expected to see nothing but a big fat pearl that should have been locked away, or reduced to what it truly was; no more than an insignificant part of a royal collection of jewels. Yet in that second, as he stared at it, the pearl was transformed. It glowed, radiating a soft light that should have been warm and yet felt as cold as the winter sea. The surface shifted like clouds covering the moon and then he saw. A bedchamber cloaked in death, the royal standard of the lion rampant hanging limp and still. He could feel the heat of the room and smell the stench of sickness. He could hear the voices of the attendants and the murmurings of a priest.
‘Craven?’ Elizabeth’s voice called him back. He shuddered, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. The pearl burned his palm. He handed it gently to her.
‘What did you see?’ she asked. As she took it from him their fingers touched.
‘I saw nothing,’ Craven lied. ‘Nothing at all.’
Chapter 6 (#ulink_e5e269d3-291a-54a2-9183-07c6a866521a)
When Holly reached the Ashmolean Museum that evening she found huge posters flanking the entrance, proclaiming the forthcoming exhibition of artefacts from the Court of Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen. It was, the poster proclaimed, an extraordinary showcase for an outstanding collection of the finest seventeenth-century glass, china, and portraiture.
The curator on duty at the door was reluctant to let Holly in until she mentioned her name and that she was meeting Mr Shurmer, whereupon he stood back with what was almost a bow and directed her to the second floor. The door of the lecture room stood wide; Holly could see the detritus of canapés and empty wine glasses strewn about. The guests were still chatting, however, and the roar of conversation was like a wall of noise.
She didn’t want to go in, to engage in conversation, to try to find Espen Shurmer in the crowd. Instead she turned away and immediately felt the shock of quietness fall about her. The roar of voices faded. There was nothing but the faint tap of her footsteps and beyond the floor to ceiling windows at the end of the corridor, the tumble of Oxford roofs, spires and towers and the glitter of the city lights.
Holly loved Oxford. She had grown up in the city and she loved the crackle of excitement, the same sense of opportunity in the air that she felt in London. It felt like a city of limitless possibilities as well as a place steeped in history. Tonight though it just felt lonely and the bright white walls and bare spaces of the museum made it all the more stark.
At the end of the corridor a thick red rope now blocked the entrance to the exhibition. Holly had been to similar events in London and knew that earlier in the evening, all the guests would have wandered through, exchanging professional opinions on the rarity and quality of the collection. Now the gallery was empty and she could see the gleam of glass in the display cases. It beckoned to her, forbidden, tempting. She slipped past the rope and went in, ignoring the portraits and the other objects, concentrating solely on the engraved glass.
As always when she saw such exquisite workmanship Holly felt her heart quicken. This was the long tradition she worked within. She had wanted to be a glass engraver almost from the moment she had started to study the decorative arts. Here she was looking at masterpieces of her craft. There were slender wine flutes in the Venetian style and fat goblets engraved with scenes from Dutch life. There were glasses shaped like inverted bells with stems of twisted spirals and broad bowls embellished with flowers.
A stunning floor-length picture of the Winter Queen dominated the far wall and seeing it, Holly felt a tug of memory. Her grandfather had told her stories of Elizabeth Stuart when she had been a little girl. Elizabeth had been a Scottish princess by birth and Holly, born in the North of England, had felt a sense of affinity with the child who had left behind her roots and travelled so far from home. The idea of a Winter Queen had caught her childish imagination; she had visualised Elizabeth spun from icicles, cold as snow, like the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia. But those stories had felt magical, unreal. Here was the story of Elizabeth’s life told through items she had touched and held.
Slowly now Holly walked between the display cases, taking in all the artefacts that she had previously ignored because she had been overwhelmed by the beauty of the glass. There were letters from Elizabeth to her husband Frederick of Bohemia, an astrolabe showing the celestial sphere with the earth at its centre, an engraved gold medal celebrating the couple’s marriage, a dagger enamelled and set with diamonds.
On a bed of blue velvet nestled two miniatures, one of Frederick and the other of Elizabeth. Leaning closer, Holly saw that the portraits had been painted in 1612, just before their marriage.
‘Miss Ansell? How do you do? I am Espen Shurmer.’
Holly jumped. Just for a moment she had forgotten that she had come to the Ashmolean to meet Espen Shurmer and talk about Ben.
Shurmer was standing on the other side of the display, hands in the pockets of his beautifully cut suit, smiling at her confusion with benevolent amusement. He stepped forwards and held out a hand.
‘Am I to assume that your presence here means that Dr Ansell has not returned?’ he asked. His English was almost accentless.
‘Mr Shurmer.’ Holly felt self-conscious and only just managed not to wipe her palms down her dress before she shook hands. ‘Yes, I’m afraid Ben is still missing.’
‘My sympathies,’ Shurmer said gravely. ‘I imagine that is very difficult for you.’
‘Thank you,’ Holly said. ‘Yes, it is a little difficult.’ She thought about her grandparents and the stoicism they were displaying in the absence of any news. When she had arrived earlier that afternoon, her grandmother had hugged her tightly for a long, long time as though she was afraid that Holly might vanish too. Her grandfather had told her he had spoken to the police and was trying to encourage them to open a formal investigation now that Ben had been gone over 48 hours without contact.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t make myself known to you when I arrived, Mr Shurmer,’ Holly said. ‘I …’ She hesitated. ‘I had an urge to see the exhibition.’
‘Of course.’ Shurmer smiled. ‘You are welcome.’ His eyes were a vivid blue. His face bore lines of humour and experience. It was impossible to guess his age although Holly thought he must be in his late sixties, or older. His English was slightly clipped and old-fashioned which only added to the charm.
‘Why would you not wish to see it?’ he said. ‘All these items are so very beautiful.’
‘Yes.’ Holly hesitated again. ‘I’m a glass engraver, you see, and these—’ She gestured towards the display cases, ‘well, I’ve never seen anything quite so stunning.’ She found that she had put out a hand towards the nearest cabinet as though wanting to touch the glass within. It was a rose-coloured goblet with a hunting scene engraved on it in gold foil. She knew it was called gold sandwich-glass and that it was so precious and expensive that it had probably been a gift and never actually used.
She saw Shurmer’s eyes widen momentarily in surprise. ‘A glass engraver,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, I see.’
‘It’s wonderful to see the glass in the context of other items from Frederick and Elizabeth’s court,’ Holly said. ‘On its own it is exquisite but seen alongside some of their other possessions it has so much more meaning. I can almost imagine stepping into the palace of the Wassenaer Hof and seeing the table set for a banquet …’ She tailed off, thinking she sounded impossibly naïve, but Shurmer’s shrewd blue gaze had sharpened with interest.
‘So you know about the Wassenaer Hof? About Elizabeth and Frederick’s court in exile?’
‘A little,’ Holly said. ‘I’ve been to The Hague but of course the palace has gone now. As for Elizabeth and Frederick, my grandfather told me about them when I was a child. He was a wonderful storyteller.’
‘The Winter Queen is not well known in this country,’ Shurmer said, ‘even though she was the daughter of King James I.’
‘She was known as the Pearl of Britain,’ Holly said. She looked at Elizabeth’s portrait. ‘She looks heartbreakingly lovely. So young as well.’
It was an unusual portrait, she thought. In it Elizabeth’s auburn hair was loose about her shoulders rather than piled up in some elaborate arrangement, and the long flowing tresses complemented the bold orange and black striped gown she wore. She was a true Scottish rose with creamy white skin and pale blue eyes.
‘As does Frederick,’ Shurmer said. Holly thought he sighed softly. ‘So young and eager. It is fortunate they did not know at that stage what was to come – betrayal, loss and exile.’
The Winter King looked no more than a boy, handsome and clean-shaven. His dark eyes were lustrous and his dark hair had a jaunty curl. Holly could see why he and Elizabeth had apparently fallen in love with each other on sight. Their good looks, hopes and expectations would have been a mirror each for the other. Everything must have seemed so wonderful in the beginning.
Then she remembered that Elizabeth had lost her brother only months before her marriage to Frederick. Even then there had been dark clouds. Unconsciously she wrapped her arms about her, warding off the darkness.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you did not invite me here to discuss this.’
Shurmer smiled. ‘On the contrary, Miss Ansell. In order to understand what it is that your brother wanted from me, it is necessary to know of the Winter Queen. But it seems that you already do.’ His gaze was intent, as though weighing up just how much she did know. ‘Has Dr Ansell already told you about his researches?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Holly said. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘So,’ Shurmer said. ‘Why did you decide to come?’
Holly did not answer immediately and he did not prompt her. There was a quality of patience, of stillness, about Espen Shurmer that was unusual, she thought. It felt as though he would always be prepared to wait as long as was needed to get what he wanted.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said honestly, after a moment. ‘I think I came because I thought it might have something to do with Ben’s disappearance, or at least help me to work out what has happened to him.’
Shurmer nodded slowly. ‘It is important to you to find him.’
‘Very,’ Holly said.
Silence fell again. She waited for Shurmer to say something reassuring. Almost everyone she had met in the past 48 hours had told her they were sure Ben would turn up soon. She knew it was intended to help, to make her feel better, even though it didn’t. But Espen Shurmer said nothing.
‘When we spoke you mentioned something about a pearl of great value,’ Holly said. ‘I must admit it surprised me. That really doesn’t sound like Ben. He’s not into antique jewellery or history of any sort, to be honest. He’s too—’ She paused. ‘He’s more about the present rather than the past.’
‘Indeed?’ A frown touched Espen Shurmer’s brow. ‘Yet he was researching your family history?’
‘I only heard about that recently,’ Holly said. ‘It seemed weird – totally out of character.’ She looked at him. ‘I’m astonished he told you about that too. Did it have something to do with his questions about the pearl?’
She saw a shadow of something flicker in Shurmer’s eyes. ‘Perhaps.’ His tone was non-committal. ‘I do not know. All I know is that Dr Ansell wanted me to tell him all I knew about the Sistrin.’
‘The Sistrin,’ Holly said, and as she said the name she felt something shift inside her like the faintest of echoes, as though she had heard the word before. ‘That is the name of the pearl,’ she said softly.
‘It is,’ Shurmer said. ‘But before I tell you about it, Miss Ansell, we must go back a little.’ He gestured to her to sit beside him on one of the museum’s wide leather benches. ‘You will humour an old man, I hope.’
It felt something of a royal edict. Holly sat.
Espen Shurmer waved a hand towards the cabinet that was closest to them. ‘You see the crystal mirror, here? What do you think of it?’
Holly followed his gaze. The same display case that held the rose-coloured engraved glass also held a number of other objects, but amongst all the gorgeously extravagant glassware they had been all but invisible to her. Now she saw them: a signet ring, a sapphire necklace set in dull gold, and a small mirror in a wooden frame that was studded with diamonds. It was shaped like a teardrop with a worn handle at the base. It was beautiful, a piece of workmanship so delicate it looked as though it would be too fragile to hold. The glass shone with a milky bluish radiance. Yet there was something about it that Holly did not like.
‘It’s a stunning piece of work,’ she said carefully.
‘It is Murano crystal,’ Shurmer said, ‘and was a gift to Mary, Queen of Scots when she wed Francois II of France. It is pretty, is it not?’
That was something of an understatement, Holly thought. The mirror was exquisite. Yet there was also something malevolent about it. She did not want to look into it though she was not exactly sure what it was about it that scared her.
‘Mary was Elizabeth’s grandmother, wasn’t she?’ she asked. ‘Did she bequeath it to her?’
The lines deepened about Shurmer’s eyes as he smiled. ‘After a fashion,’ he said. ‘It was stolen by Elizabeth I of England when she had Mary put to death. Later Elizabeth sent it back to Scotland as a christening gift for Elizabeth Stuart, who was her goddaughter. It was, however, something of a cursed gift.’
‘Cursed?’ Holly said. She didn’t believe in the supernatural. She had never liked things she could not explain: ghosts, the Loch Ness monster, even the placebo effect. Even so, she felt the goosebumps creep along the back of her neck.
‘The mirror became a tool for necromancy,’ Shurmer said. ‘Soothsaying,’ he added, in response to Holly’s enquiring glance. ‘After Frederick lost his throne he became obsessed with the need to know whether he would ever regain his patrimony. He was a member of the Order of Knights of the Rosy Cross. They were said to have the power of foretelling the future and they used the crystal mirror in their magic.’
‘I remember reading about the Knights of the Rosy Cross years ago,’ Holly said. ‘Some people thought them healers rather than magicians. And some said they were charlatans in league with the devil.’
‘Very good, Miss Ansell.’ Shurmer was nodding his approval. ‘The Knights of the Rosy Cross were many things to many men.’ Then as she smiled, he said: ‘Forgive me. I sound like a teacher, I know, but it is rare to meet someone who has heard of the Order of the Rosy Cross.’ He sighed. ‘Legend has it that the Knights used a number of tools in their scrying, but that the jewelled mirror was the most important because it had the power to reflect the future. It had been forged in fire, you see, and it was said that as from fire it had come, so into fire it would lead its enemies.’
Holly gave a little involuntary shiver. She found she did not want to look directly at the mirror now, but paradoxically it almost felt as though it was willing her to turn, beckoning her gaze. Very deliberately she shifted so that her back was towards it.
‘The mirror was said to have caused the death of Henry, Lord Darnley, in an explosion and fire,’ Shurmer said. ‘It was also rumoured to have foretold the Gunpowder Plot. On the very day of the Princess Elizabeth’s christening, her nurse saw a vision of hellfire and flame in the mirror and the child upon the throne of England.’
‘I know that the plotters planned to set Princess Elizabeth up as a puppet queen,’ Holly said, ‘but since the Gunpowder Plot didn’t actually succeed, technically it can’t be said that the mirror predicted the future.’
Shurmer’s eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘I see that you are a most logical person, Miss Ansell.’
‘I try to be,’ Holly said.
Shurmer’s smile deepened. ‘Then I doubt you will believe for a moment the tales of the Knights and their soothsaying,’ he said. ‘Or a mirror that can destroy its enemies through fire.’
‘It’s certainly a great story,’ Holly said. ‘How did the mirror come into your collection?’
‘That was by fortunate chance,’ Shurmer said. The bright white lights of the exhibition cases threw the shadows of his face into stark relief. Suddenly he looked frail, the skin stretched too taut across his cheekbones, his eyes tired.
‘For many years the mirror was missing,’ he said. ‘It was believed buried with Frederick, but Frederick’s tomb was lost during the Thirty Years War. Then the mirror miraculously reappeared in the late twentieth century at a car boot sale in Corby in Northamptonshire.’
Holly almost choked. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘but you do not strike me as the sort of man who spends his time attending car boot sales.’
Shurmer laughed. ‘What I should have said is that I was alerted to the fact that there was a very old, very fine mirror for sale. An … associate of mine bought it and mentioned it to me. He knew that I was interested in seventeenth-century artefacts, particularly those from the Bohemian court.’
‘I suppose it had no provenance?’ Holly said.
Shurmer shook his head. ‘Naturally not. But it matches the known descriptions and pictures of the Murano crystal mirror.’
‘Did you have it authenticated?’ Holly asked. It would be the natural thing to do; call in a group of experts to assess the mirror and confirm its age and origin. Yet Espen Shurmer was shaking his head again and she sensed that his belief in the mirror and its myth was so strong that either he believed it absolutely without the need for proof or he did not want to question it too closely in case he destroyed the legend.
Of course he might be right. It could indeed be the very mirror that the Winter King had used to foresee the future. Holly glanced at it again and felt the same disturbing pull. A breath of wind seemed to ripple through the still air of the gallery. The lights seemed to shimmer and the mirror glowed in its case as though it were alive. She shuddered, closing her eyes. When she reopened them the gallery swam back into her vision, all bright lights and clean modern lines. It looked normal, just an empty room with old objects in display cases.
‘That brings us to the Sistrin pearl,’ Shurmer said, ‘for the crystal mirror was not the only gift bequeathed to Elizabeth by her grandmother. It was matched with a jewel of rare beauty and price.’ He waved a hand towards the miniature of young Elizabeth that was displayed in the glass cabinet. Holly saw that she was wearing a string of pearls with one huge drop pearl in the centre. The simplicity of the necklace and the radiance of the jewels suited the innocence of the portrait. Curiously though, the big pearl was shaped exactly like the crystal mirror. It was a pear shape, or teardrop.
‘The Sistrin pearl was also said to hold great magic.’ Shurmer, too, was looking towards the cabinet where the pearl gleamed at Elizabeth’s neck. ‘It was supposedly a powerful talisman for good, but like the mirror it also possessed the power to wreak destruction if it was misused.’
‘Old pearls almost always have some sort of legend attached to them, though, don’t they?’ Holly said. ‘I mean, usually they have belonged to pirates or they are cursed or something. It was a very superstitious age.’
‘That is true,’ Shurmer said. ‘Certainly the Knights of the Rosy Cross believed the legends and used the pearl and the mirror together in their necromancy. They used their magic to create firewater, a medium through which the future could not only be seen but could also be transformed.’
‘That sounds rather dangerous to me,’ Holly said. ‘If you believe in these things …’ She hesitated. ‘Well, you’re meddling with forces you cannot control, aren’t you.’
‘Yes,’ Shurmer said. There was an odd note in his voice. ‘Indeed you are.’
‘Was this what Ben wanted to know?’ Holly asked. ‘The legend of the Sistrin pearl?’
Shurmer shook his head. ‘Dr Ansell already knew the history of the pearl,’ he said. ‘No—’ His eyes met hers and Holly felt something akin to an electric shock. ‘Your brother wished to find out what had happened to the pearl after it passed out of the possession of the Winter Queen.’
Holly felt even more bewildered. ‘Why on earth would he want to know that?’
‘I have no notion,’ Shurmer said calmly. ‘He would not say. That was why I wanted to meet him. I thought that perhaps he had found it.’
‘Found it?’ Holly felt completely bewildered. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Shurmer, I don’t quite understand …’
‘After the Winter Queen’s death, the pearl disappeared,’ Shurmer said, ‘but unlike the crystal mirror it never reappeared. We do not know its fate. It is lost.’ He made a slight gesture and the light flashed on the expensive gold watch he wore. ‘It is the holy grail of collectors, Miss Ansell. Everyone wants to find the Sistrin pearl. I myself have sought it for forty years.’
There was silence in the gallery. Holly could hear nothing except the soft hum of the air conditioning. She was very aware of Espen Shurmer watching her, gauging her every expression. She was not sure what was showing on her face. It had been astonishing enough to discover that Ben had been involved in some sort of family history research. Now to discover that he had been making enquiries about a long-lost pearl was extraordinary. It felt as though there should be a connection between the two but Holly could not imagine what it was. The story of the mirror and the pearl seemed no more than superstition and legend.
‘You should know,’ Shurmer said, and Holly realised that he was picking his words very carefully, ‘that after Dr Ansell contacted me I did make some enquiries into his background and history.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Forgive me, but I am a rich man and sometimes criminals will try to target my collection. Naturally I quickly realised your brother was no such person.’ His smile was disarming. ‘Yet equally I could find no obvious connection between your family and the Winter Queen to suggest why your brother might possess the Sistrin.’
‘Did you ask him?’ Holly said. ‘Whether he had the pearl, I mean?’
‘Yes,’ Shurmer said. His tone was pensive. ‘He was … evasive. He suggested we meet and I agreed.’
There was silence. Holly tried to remember her conversations with Ben. None of them had involved anything as arcane as lost treasure. She thought about the mill. She had spent much of the day tidying it up and she had found nothing unusual or unexpected. The lack of clues towards Ben’s disappearance had frustrated her.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said helplessly. ‘Ben said nothing to me. I really don’t think I can help.’
‘No matter,’ Shurmer said graciously. ‘I would ask, though, that if you discover anything, you let me know?’ He took a card from his inside pocket and passed it to Holly. It felt crisp and smooth beneath her fingers, the edges sharp.
‘Oh, of course,’ she said. ‘Of course I will.’
She stood up, suddenly wanting to be gone from this place, the supernatural stories and the crystal mirror’s sinister gleam. It was easy to believe in superstition when she was encased in a world like the Ashmolean, where thousand-year-old tribal masks watched her with blank eyes as she passed and she could hear the whispers of history.
‘I understand that you are most anxious to uncover the reasons for your brother’s disappearance, Miss Ansell,’ Shurmer said quietly, getting to his feet too. ‘I hope that you find what you are looking for.’
‘Thank you,’ Holly said. ‘I …’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sure he will turn up soon.’
She saw the smile that touched Shurmer’s eyes and knew that he knew she was lying.
‘Let us hope so,’ he said. He held out a hand and Holly shook it.
‘It was … very interesting … to meet you, Mr Shurmer.’
‘A pleasure, Miss Ansell,’ Shurmer said. He sounded as though he meant it.
Holly had already taken five steps away when she stopped and turned back. Espen Shurmer was standing where she had left him, beside the display case that contained the crystal mirror.
‘What was the special power that the pearl was said to possess?’ she asked. The words seemed to spring from her of their own volition. She was not even sure what had put them in her mind. Then, when Shurmer did not immediately reply, she added:
‘You said that the mirror destroyed its enemies through fire. What did the pearl do?’
She saw it then, the flicker of disquiet in Espen Shurmer’s eyes, and knew that for some reason he had deliberately kept this from her.
‘Mr Shurmer?’ she said.
‘The pearl’s power came from water,’ Shurmer said. ‘It destroyed its enemies through the medium of water.’
Holly thought of the mill, of the splash of the stream running beneath the wheel and the lazy glare of the sun on the pond. It had to be a coincidence, and yet she felt a deep chill in her bones. She thought of Ben and for a terrifying moment her mind was full of darkness. There was the rushing sound of water in her ears and a pressure in her lungs that smothered her breath. Coldness gripped her limbs and there was fear that cut like a blade.
‘The Winter Queen’s eldest son died from drowning,’ she said slowly. ‘And her brother – did he not die after swimming in the Thames?’
‘That is indeed so, Miss Ansell,’ Shurmer said. ‘Those who dismiss such magic as mere superstition are perhaps complacent.’
A huge shudder shook Holly. If Ben truly had the Sistrin pearl, had it destroyed him, too? She turned, practically running from the gallery, down the stairs and out of the main door oblivious to the curious glances of the people she passed. Her breath was coming in short bursts and she had a stitch in her side and when she reached the bottom of the steps she had to stop and steady herself against the wall.
Out in the street there were crowds gathering outside the theatre opposite, spilling into the road. The normality of noise and people and light slowly wrapped about Holly, banishing the mysteries of the museum. She straightened up and started to walk slowly towards St Giles, all the while wondering what had happened to her. Stories of cursed mirrors and legendary pearls, magic and superstition, were so alien to her that she was puzzled that she had entertained them for a moment. She used such ideas as inspiration for her engraving designs but she did not really believe in them. Or she had not, until tonight.
Now, though, she felt on edge, adrift, rocked by uncertainty. She told herself that in ten minutes she would be back at her grandparents’ house and they would be bursting to tell her that they had had a message from Ben. He would be safe, he would be on the way home to Tasha and all would be well. Later, when all the fuss had died down, she would ask him about the pearl and Espen Shurmer, and he would explain that it had just been a casual enquiry as a result of something he had stumbled across in the family history …
Holly turned left into the Woodstock Road, heading for Summertown, walking briskly even though she was so tired. It was raining a little, the pavements slick, the raindrops running down the car windows and stinging Holly’s face, blurring the city lights to an endless string of pearls that was finally swallowed in darkness.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_8ec61b17-b92b-571e-aa24-314df6768007)
Palace of Rhenen, June 1632
William Craven had kept quiet about the soothsaying. Elizabeth was grateful he had held his tongue. At the same time she was ashamed he had seen her weakness. She owed him no apology for believing in the power of the mirror and the pearl, but she did regret revealing to him, however tacitly, her doubts in Frederick’s ability to lead, to fight, to win back his lands. She had been weak and had shown too little faith. Time had revealed her mistake. Frederick’s letters to her were full of joy and good news; Gustavus Adolphus had received him with all the ceremony due to a king and included him in his military councils. Plans were advancing for the retaking of the Palatine lands. Kreuznach had been reclaimed. Soon he would be sending for her to take their rightful place in Heidelberg once more.
Craven was Frederick’s squire now and had been his
constant messenger, carrying the news from the campaign in Germany and taking Elizabeth’s more domestic correspondence back to the King. He had ridden in just as she had been about to set out from the palace that morning to hunt in the woods above Rhenen. Elizabeth had insisted that he accompany the party and give her the news as they rode. It had perhaps been unkind of her given that he was weary and travel-stained, and only three months before had been injured in the taking of the castle at Kreuznach. Frederick had commended him for his bravery, saying that Craven had been first through the breached walls and that the King of Sweden himself had praised him for being a fine soldier.
Elizabeth glanced at him now as they rode side by side through the dappled shade. They had outrun the rest of the hunting party who even now were crashing through the woods below, calling out, frightening away any deer in earshot. She had allowed her elder sons to join her that morning, but sometimes she despaired that they would ever learn the cunning and guile of the true hunter. Yet they were young still, and eager for the chase. She supposed she would reproach them more had they been timorous creatures who stayed at home whilst she rode out.
Craven’s face was, as always, quite severe in repose. He made no attempt to entertain her or to chatter inconsequentially as so many courtiers did. Elizabeth wondered what it felt like to be him; to be so reckless of his personal safety that he would fight without reserve, without fear. It was no wonder that her sons admired him as a hero. They were uncomplicated boys, fired with the zeal to regain their inheritance. They wanted to be soldiers, understood nothing of politics and cared even less. A man of such straightforward convictions as William Craven commanded their loyalty.
‘You have not yet told me the news from Munich,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I heard that my husband supped with the Duke of Bavaria.’
‘And wished you present, madam, to add beauty to the proceedings,’ Craven said.
Elizabeth laughed. ‘Frederick’s words, I’ll wager, not yours, Lord Craven. You are not known for your courtly address.’
‘As to that, madam,’ Craven said, ‘I can vouch that there are no beauties in Bavaria other than the scenery.’
They were still laughing when the first of the hunting party broke through the trees into the dappled clearing. Elizabeth felt a wilful urge to wheel her horse around and dig her heels into its flanks, leaving them standing. Then she saw Charles Louis, his expression hovering on the edge of mutiny at the prospect of his mother outrunning him again, so instead she reined back and allowed them to surround her, chattering, and rode forwards decorously out of the shadows and onto the open hill.
From here there was a beautiful view of the little town of Rhenen, clinging to the hillside, and the curl of the river to the east. The sunlight twinkled on the gables of the hunting lodge Frederick had built, finished only the previous year. They’d had so little time to enjoy this place together before war had come again. Elizabeth felt a chill premonition that they never would.
The servants were spreading out a meal on a plateau in the shade of the trees. They scurried around unpacking boxes, setting rugs and cushions. There was glazed ham and pastries, roasted meats and red wine. Craven had gone to fetch a glass for her. She was about to dismount – Billingsley, her Master of the Horse, had come forwards to help her.
‘Why such a long face?’ she asked him, knowing full well it was because she had chosen to ride ahead with Craven leaving him to watch over the princes.
Billingsley flushed. He did not have Craven’s easy way of responding to her comments, whether they were teasing or serious. He was too stiff and formal, conscious of his status and of hers too. She supposed William Craven ought to show a similar deference but he never did and she had given up expecting it of him. Besides, something about Craven’s uncomplicated approach was refreshing. He told her the truth as he saw it. He could be blunt, but he was never disrespectful.
There was a sudden crashing sound of a branch falling and shouts from across the clearing where the Princes were playing hide and seek, climbing trees, their irrepressible high spirits toppling over into dangerous risk-taking. Elizabeth spun around in the saddle.
‘Don’t let them—’ she said to Billingsley, but it was too late, one of the trees was rotten. The falling branch had been a precursor and now the whole trunk shook and with a roaring sound like the tide rushing in it fell, the branches clashing together. Some fool screamed. Elizabeth’s horse took fright, rearing and taking her by surprise. She lost the reins and made a grab for the mane as the horse bolted, plunging back into the trees the way they had come.
Elizabeth saw a jumbled vision of images flash past: Craven, running for his horse, Billingsley, his mouth hanging open in shock, the servants frozen to the spot, the boys pausing in their shrieks of excitement to stare after her in horror. Then all hell broke loose behind her with screams and shouts, but all she could do was cling on for dear life, crouched low as the trees whipped overhead and the horse ran and ran, propelled onwards by its own panic until at last it slowed and then stopped.
She slid down to the ground and sat for a moment half-lying, half-tumbled whilst she caught her breath. Her first sensation was relief and her second, following swiftly, was anger. She was the best female equestrian at court, one of the best riders there was. Yes, the horse was skittish and high-spirited – even now she was shying at her own shadow, ears flat as she blew out her breath in great heaving pants – but Elizabeth had prided herself on the fact that she was one of the few who could ride her. Her pride had been richly served now.
There was no sound, no one calling for her, no noise of men or carts, nothing but the wind in the trees and the chirps of the birds, so loud they seemed to fill her ears. She reached for the reins and started to stroke the horse’s nose, speaking softly to her, calming her until she too felt calmer. Soon she would be able to remount and try to follow her tracks back to the edge of the wood. It could not be difficult. She would find her way back to Rhenen. Besides, had she not always said she wanted to be alone? Now, unexpectedly, she had as much solitude as she could deal with.
The bushes rustled on her right, but it was only a bird foraging in the undergrowth. She got to her feet stiffly and, leading the horse, started to walk in what she hoped was the right direction. There was little sunlight through the thick canopy and the branches sprouted low, tangling with the thick and thorny bushes. Within a few minutes Elizabeth was hot and scratched and dirty, hungry too, and resenting the picnic left so far behind. Being alone was not as enjoyable as she had thought it would be. There was something unfriendly about the wood, its darkness and silence. It felt as though someone was watching her.
The horse picked up on her nervousness, flicking her ears, whisking her tail. When a noisy bird crashed through the leaves above and flew off with a startled alarm call Elizabeth thought she would bolt again and gripped the reins more tightly, but the horse was too tired. They both were.
The bird had been warning of an approach. Elizabeth could hear footsteps and turned sharply just as a man stepped onto the path in front of her. The sun was behind him and for a moment she could not see his face, then she realised it was William Craven.
‘Craven!’ she said. Her voice wobbled, betraying her. She wondered if he was going to berate her for poor horsemanship or make light of her headlong flight, but he did neither. His face was white and he looked afraid. He dropped to one knee and took her hand, kissing it.
‘Madam! You are safe?’
‘As you see,’ Elizabeth said. She felt shock and something more intimate that shocked her all the more. She resisted the urge to touch his bent head.
‘Thank God.’ His voice had strengthened. He scrambled to his feet. ‘I was afraid for you.’ He corrected himself. ‘We were all afraid, for she set off at such a mad gallop with you. Everyone has been searching the forest.’
‘Then you had better lead me back to them,’ Elizabeth said. She looked about her. ‘I have no notion where we are. It was lucky you found me.’
‘You are almost at the edge of the trees.’ Craven had taken the horse’s bridle, leading her between the trees, at the same time holding back the brambles and briars that snatched at Elizabeth’s skirt. ‘You would doubtless have found your way back safely before too long.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Elizabeth said, ‘it was you who found me. I owe you a debt of gratitude, Lord Craven. Another one. As does my husband.’
‘Your husband?’ Craven paused. They were on the edge of the wood. ‘Yes, of course.’ His voice changed. ‘His Majesty would be distraught to know of your accident.’
‘There is no harm done,’ Elizabeth said. She looked closely at his face as she stepped past him, out into the sunshine and light and fresh air. ‘You, though,’ she said, noting the lines etched deep on his face, ‘you look as though you need a physician. I had forgotten you were wounded lately. Are you in pain?
A smile lightened his expression, lifting the lines of anxiety from about his eyes. ‘I am quite well, thank you, madam.’ He came up to her and set his hands on her waist to lift her up into the saddle. They were very close together. Elizabeth looked up into his face, the strong line of his jaw, the cleft in his chin, the light in his hazel eyes. Something shifted inside her and warmed and she caught her breath on a wave of longing.
He looked down then, catching her desire, and suddenly he was close enough to kiss and she saw the heat in his eyes and for one long moment they stared at one another. Then he took a step back and lifted her, very gently, into the saddle and turned his back as he led the horse out onto the open hillside towards home.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_df75eba6-aa3e-58af-8dc4-6a4585d48302)
Hester was waiting for Holly when she got back to Summertown. The house was warm and light. The smell of a casserole cooking reached her from the kitchen and made Holly’s stomach rumble. Bonnie was waiting too, waving her feathery tail with the sort of enthusiasm she showed whether Holly had been away for an hour or a day. Holly felt her cold unhappiness thaw a little as she bent down to give the dog a cuddle.
‘Hello, Gran,’ she said, smiling. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Darling …’ Her grandmother planted a firm kiss on Holly’s cheek, one each side, and hugged her. She felt frail to Holly, her bones brittle beneath the cashmere jumper she wore. ‘I’m doing all right,’ she said, ‘but how are you? How did your meeting go with Ben’s friend?’
‘It was fine,’ Holly said lightly. She brushed her lips against her grandmother’s cheek. It was dusted with pink and felt marshmallow soft.
‘He hadn’t heard from Ben, had he?’ Hester asked, and Holly could hear the lift of hope in her voice.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. She wasn’t going to tell her grandmother about Espen Shurmer and the bizarre suggestions that Ben had been connected, however vaguely, to some sort of occult society. It was all just too strange to consider.
She watched her grandmother as she walked across the kitchen to reach for the kettle and turn it on. Tall, thin and ineffably elegant, Hester’s shoulders were square and her back as straight as a rod. Army discipline, Holly thought. There was a picture of the Brigadier, Holly’s great-grandfather, in one of the bedrooms upstairs. In it, he was whippet thin and the expression in his eyes suggested that he would not tolerate insubordination in the ranks or slumping in small girls. Holly wondered how much that discipline was helping her grandmother to deal with Ben’s disappearance. She had had so much to bear over the years, losing her daughter and son-in-law and taking on their two children, and now having to deal with Ben going missing.
‘Tasha rang,’ Hester said now, over the sound of the kettle boiling. ‘She hasn’t heard anything from Ben either. His practice is in a complete tizzy. They’ve had to get a locum in.’
‘Of course,’ Holly said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ She realised for the first time that the ripples from Ben’s disappearance would spread out much further than his family and immediate friends. She had rung round as many people as she knew, hoping someone would have had word from him, but she realised with a pang that she didn’t know half of Ben’s acquaintances. Trying to find him seemed a hopeless task.
‘Tasha seems very angry and convinced he’s gone on purpose to punish her for something.’ Her grandmother spoke without inflection but Holly could see the effort it cost her; her hands shook a little as she filled the teapot. Holly went across and put an arm about her and for a moment they stood close, their heads resting against each other.
‘Do you suppose Tasha’s right?’ Hester asked suddenly. ‘That Ben was having an affair and has gone off with another woman?’ She took two blue and white patterned mugs from the cupboard and warmed them with the spare water from the kettle. ‘I don’t want to believe it, but I suppose it could be true.’
‘Gran, no!’ Holly said. She felt shocked that her grandmother would even countenance the idea. ‘You know Ben wouldn’t do something like that.’
She saw her grandmother’s brows lift slightly but she let the subject go.
‘This is all Tasha’s fault,’ Holly said, suddenly fierce. ‘Suggesting Ben was unfaithful. I’m so angry with her!’ She had tried never to criticise Tasha to her grandparents because she knew that they’d had as delicate a relationship with her as Holly, but now she’d had enough. ‘Ben wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘He was very loyal. He would never run off without a word. Abandoning Florence and his work responsibilities … That’s just not in character.’
She saw her grandmother’s shoulders slump and she gave her an apologetic smile. ‘I’m sure you’re right, darling.’ Hester said. ‘This whole business makes me doubt my own sanity.’
Holly nodded. ‘The trouble is that Tasha has told the police they were having relationship difficulties and so they don’t think he is missing in the true sense,’ she said, fighting to keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘So they won’t do anything to look for him.’ She spread her hands wide. ‘It makes me feel so helpless,’ she said. ‘I’m angry and frustrated and I don’t know what to do.’
Hester poured the tea and passed one of the mugs to Holly. ‘If it weren’t relationship problems they would imply he had run away because of something else,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘Financial worries, depression. They would suggest he might have taken his own life …’ She looked up and Holly saw the fear in her eyes. It was so stark that she felt her heart miss a beat. ‘I do worry that might be true,’ Hester said simply. ‘I can’t help myself.’
‘Gran …’ Holly said. She was even more horrified now. ‘No. Ben wouldn’t …’ She stopped because she couldn’t even form the words.
‘Oh, well …’ Hester’s voice strengthened. ‘I’m sure I’m just being negative. We can’t give up hope, especially so soon.’ She squeezed Holly’s hand. ‘He’ll be back soon, I’m sure of it.’
Holly wondered if the words sounded a little more hollow each time someone said them and perhaps her grandmother felt the same because she turned away as though to shield her expression from Holly, like she was ashamed.
‘Your grandfather is dining at Balliol tonight, so it’s just us,’ she said brightly. ‘I hope you don’t mind, darling? I think perhaps he doesn’t know what to do with himself so he’s trying to stick to some sort of routine.’
‘That’s OK.’ There was a lump in Holly’s throat. For so many years she had thought her grandparents invincible. It was frightening to think her grandfather was feeling as lost and confused as she was and that her grandmother was putting on a brave face. ‘I’ll see him again tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Lovely,’ her grandmother said. She opened the Aga and took out a battered-looking casserole pot. ‘It’s lamb hot pot and beans.’
‘My favourite.’ Holly smiled at her.
They ate supper in the living room, with trays on their knees. The room was grand, but made smaller by the lamplight and the fire and the heavy curtains that blotted out the twilight.
‘You don’t mind a fire, do you, darling?’ Hester asked. ‘I know it’s been a hot day but I always feel the chill when night falls.’
‘As long as you don’t mind me falling asleep,’ Holly said, stifling a yawn.
‘Of course not,’ Hester said. ‘You must be exhausted. I don’t suppose any of us have slept since …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘We wondered if you wanted to stay for a few days?’ she added. ‘Guy as well, if he’s coming down …’ There was an unspoken question in the words. ‘Or do you have to get back to London?’
‘I’m not going back to London,’ Holly said. ‘Or rather I will, but only to arrange to have everything sent down to Ashdown. I’m going to live at the mill for a while.’
Hester dropped her fork with a clatter. ‘Darling!’ She looked appalled. ‘Is it really a good idea to uproot yourself from home like this? It could all be for nothing.’
‘I realise that,’ Holly said, ‘but I feel I need to be there.’
‘But …’ It was unusual for Holly to see her grandmother lost for words. Before her retirement Hester had been a professor of mathematics; incisive, objective and able to pinpoint an issue and dissect it with forensic skill. ‘Please don’t misunderstand me,’ Hester said now, very carefully. ‘I realise that you may want to be at Ashdown in order to try to find Ben. You want to be on the spot; perhaps it will help you to feel closer to him. But is this really wise?’
Holly sighed. She had been expecting a reaction like this but it was difficult to explain, especially when she didn’t really understand the impulse herself. All she knew was that she had to be there. It felt right. It felt like the only place to be.
‘I only know that I want to be at Ashdown at the moment,’ Holly said. ‘Guy and I are over.’ She met her grandmother’s eyes. ‘We were over long before this, if I’m honest. I just needed a jolt to make me see the truth.’
‘Again,’ Hester said, ‘not the best time to be making life-changing decisions.’
Holly sighed. ‘Trust me. Please. Sometimes it’s exactly the right time to see what is important and what isn’t.’
Now it was her grandmother’s turn to sigh. ‘Oh Holly.’
‘Don’t tell me that you never thought I’d made a mistake,’ Holly said.
Hester looked reproachful. ‘Now you’re putting me on the spot. But yes …’ She shook her head, somewhere between exasperation and indulgence. ‘I did wonder. You’re so self-contained I never thought you would marry anyone. I was very surprised when you got engaged. And I was even more surprised you chose Guy.’
Holly demolished the last of the hotpot. She was astonished to find she had such an appetite. She hadn’t eaten at all, hadn’t felt like eating, for several days
‘I’ve wondered about that myself more than once since we split,’ she admitted. ‘Guy was nice.’ She winced. ‘Okay, that’s not a good reason. He was funny, and charming, and we had a good time together. And that was all I wanted.’
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Nicola Cornick
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: For fans of Barbara Erskine and Kate Morton comes an unforgettable novel about three women and the power one lie can have over history.London, 1662:There was something the Winter Queen needed to tell him. She fought for the strength to speak.‘The crystal mirror is a danger. It must be destroyed – ‘He replied instantly. ‘It will’.Ashdown, Oxfordshire, present day: Ben Ansell is researching his family tree when he disappears. As his sister Holly begins a desperate search, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to an ornate antique mirror and to the diary of Lavinia, a 19th century courtesan who was living at Ashdown House when it burned to the ground over 200 years ago.Intrigued, and determined to find out more about the tragedy at Ashdown, Holly’s only hope is that uncovering the truth about the past will lead her to Ben.‘Fans of Kate Morton will enjoy this gripping tale.‘– Candis