A Winter’s Tale (49 page)

But this time the old lady was directed to insist on slowly reading every word of the small print and querying things, and you could see Jack start to get rattled.

‘It says here that you will move me out of the house while renovations take place?’

‘Of course. We wouldn’t want you breathing in all that dust or being disturbed by the noise. But you would return as soon as it was finished,’ he assured her.

‘That sounds all right,’ she said doubtfully.

‘You can trust me,’ he said, with one of his delightful smiles. ‘Now, if you’d just like to sign here and—’

This was the point where the TV team came in and the presenter said, ‘I’m Brent Collins of
Dodgy Dealings
, and I think perhaps you forgot to explain to this lady that when she moves back into her home, it will only be to a small flat in part of it.’

Jack looked initially appalled but soon attempted to talk his way out of it, saying he thought the lady understood his proposals and that he had many former customers very happy with their custom-made accommodation, in which they lived rent free. ‘And what I am doing is entirely legal!’

‘But you
are
misleading vulnerable people into signing documents that they don’t understand, with false promises,’ said the presenter. ‘But this is one property you won’t be getting. Perhaps you could explain—’

But Jack had had enough. ‘No comment,’ he said, pushing roughly past the TV team and the next shot showed him gunning away down the drive in his familiar sports car.

There was a short, stunned silence around the TV. Then Ottie said brightly, ‘Well, that
was
interesting, wasn’t it? He’s going to find it very hard to persuade anyone to sell their
house to him after that, and you can kiss your money goodbye, Hebe.’

‘I am sure Jack didn’t intend to deceive anyone,’ Hebe began indignantly. ‘It—’

‘Oh, come on, Hebe,’ Ottie said. ‘Of course he did! I’ve heard he’s borrowed on his expectations too. And there are one or two other strange rumours going round—I’ve asked friends to look into them.’

‘I’d heard about Clara Cathcart from Sir William,’ Seth admitted, with a worried sideways look at me. ‘I told Jack he was sailing a bit close to the wind—we argued about it. And if he’s a bit overstretched, then he’s going to find it even tougher now, isn’t he?’

‘This must be why he’s been so keen to close all those deals before Christmas. He must have known this programme would be on,’ I said. ‘He might have warned us—and no wonder he suddenly decamped to Barbados!’

‘I think what he did to those elderly people was ethically
totally
evil,’ Lucy said. ‘I hope he goes bust.’

‘Lucy!’ said Aunt Hebe, shocked.

‘Well, I bet he’d have done the same to Winter’s End, if Mum had been spineless enough to sign it over to him.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t—and Jack is terribly fond of Sophy!’

‘It’s in much safer hands with Mum, take it from me,’ Lucy assured her, but although the programme might have shaken Hebe’s faith, she continued to defend him.

Next day the announcement of my engagement to Jack appeared in
The Times
(I had entirely forgotten that he’d said he’d sent it) and I had phone call from a tabloid, though Mr Yatton fielded that one.

I wrested Jack’s number in Barbados away from Aunt Hebe and phoned him, telling him we had seen the TV
programme and also that he’d forgotten to cancel the engagement announcement.

He sounded relaxed and amused. ‘The programme was a big deal about nothing. They can’t touch me, I haven’t done anything illegal. In fact, I made very nice little apartments for the owners, all mod cons. And I didn’t cancel the announcement because I thought it would get my debtors off my back until things are sorted out, if they think I’m about to marry you. Look, just play along with it for a couple of weeks, OK?’

‘
Not
OK! Absolutely not!’ I said, and slammed down the phone.

I sent an announcement to
The Times
, unengaging myself, despite Hebe’s pleadings.

Chapter Thirty-four: Revelations

Joan promises to teach the child well, to give her the key to the coffer when she should be of an age to value its contents and to make known to her the truth.

From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1582

‘It’s nice to be just us two again, isn’t it?’ Lucy said a week or so later. She was curled up on the parlour sofa with a book and I was sewing my patchwork. Charlie was lying on my feet, which had gone numb, though I hadn’t got the heart to move him.

‘Yes, it doesn’t often happen now, what with Hebe and Ottie constantly around, not to mention Guy turning up at the weekends. And you spend every morning with Mr Yatton.’

‘I’m as likely to find you arguing with Seth in here every evening, or even vanished down to the pub,’ she retaliated. ‘And at least my mornings with Mr Yatton are productive. The Winter’s End visitor website is up and running and we’ve successfully bid on eBay for a chiller cabinet for the tearoom, and a couple of display cabinets.’

‘My arguments with Seth are productive too,’ I protested. ‘Well, they are if I win them…He is so stubborn, sometimes there’s just nothing doing with him. But that’s head gardeners for you.’

She cast me an unfathomable look. ‘Aunt Hebe said that rose he gave you at Christmas was significant.’

‘I don’t know what she means by that, but it was certainly a surprise. I didn’t think I rated one of his precious roses.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he thinks you’re worth a rose. Mum, while we are alone, do you think I could look at Alys’s book again? It’s ages since I’ve seen it.’

‘You’re not going to start treasure-hunting like Jack, are you?’

‘No, I just want to refresh my memory, and I’m curious to see the box too.’

‘All right,’ I agreed, but I still made sure the shutters were closed over the windows and locked the doors before I opened the corner cabinet.

I lifted Alys’s household book onto the table, while Lucy admired the way the inside of the chest was carved, and the compartments and false drawer fronts.

‘This is really cute,’ she said. ‘What are these little stones?’

‘Some sort of runes, I think, but I’m not sure. Put these cotton gloves on if you are going to touch the book. I keep some in here specially.’

She sighed, but did as I asked and then opened the book at the flyleaf, thoughtfully reading the inscriptions.

‘I’ll go and make us some coffee,’ I said. ‘Do you want gingerbread? Mrs Lark said she was making it earlier.’

‘Mmm…’ she said, engrossed.

When I came back she had gone back to examining the box, and had not only entirely pulled out the little drawers but was carefully studying the interior, her fair head bent low.

‘What are you doing?’ I said, setting the tray down a safe distance away from the chest. ‘I know the inside is interesting, but not
that
interesting!’

Lucy, a look of concentration on her face, removed an
apostle coffee spoon from a saucer and applied the tip of the handle gently downwards…There was a small sound: ‘There!’ she said triumphantly.

‘What is it? You haven’t damaged it, have you?’

‘No, I just had a hunch. There was only one rose carved among all those leaves and flowers, right down inside the central part of the chest where the household book was, so since Alys said the secret lay at the heart of the rose, I wondered if something might happen if I pressed it—and it has. See?’

I leaned over and she demonstrated. ‘This bit of wood that looks like part of the carved design slides out at the front and there’s a cavity underneath.’

Something lay within. ‘It’s another book—and hidden right under the first! I wonder what this one is. It’s a tight fit,’ I added, manoeuvring with the end of the apostle spoon.

‘I was thinking the other day, when I read in the new guidebook about how Alys came here in her mother’s place to try and heal the heir of Winter’s End, that maybe she would have brought some recipes for the remedies she would need, written down. So I bet it’s Alys’s
own
household book.’

‘Let’s see if you’re right,’ I said, opening the slender volume with great care. On the first page was written, in faded ink and a difficult-to-read hand, ‘This is Alys Blezzard’s book, in her tenth year.’

‘You seem to be right—except she began it long before she came to Winter’s End.’

Side by side we sat, trying to make out the entries on each page. Most were lists of herbs and plants, with their uses, and recipes, some more esoteric than others. Gently leafing through, eventually we came to an upside-down page. A couple of scraps of loose parchment fell out, one inscribed with the pre-Christian symbol of good fortune
called a Chi-rho cross, the other a line or two of verse. I picked it up, read it through, then stared at the scrawled initials on the bottom.

‘A poem?’ Lucy said, peering at it. ‘The ink is more faded than that in the book, isn’t it?’

I held it, my heart beating fast, remembering how I had laughed when Ottie had told me the family secret.

But Lucy was more interested in why the middle page of the book was upside down. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, turning the whole thing over, ‘she wrote something else, starting from the back. It looks like a sort of diary, though there are no dates, just years.’

I tore myself from the scrap of parchment, but not before gently laying it down in the centre of the table, as though it would shiver into dust at the lightest touch.

Lucy was right, it
was
Alys’s journal of sorts, her thoughts from the day she was told she was to come to Winter’s End in her mother’s place and, though the handwriting was difficult to make out, we deciphered most of it.

It took us ages and at some point I heard Jonah try the door on his rounds of locking the house up, pause, and then go on. But we couldn’t stop reading until we got to the end, and I know my face was wet with tears when I finished it—it was so sad. Lucy was sniffling, too.

Where it abruptly ended, another hand had added:

Some say they see the ghost of my mother, dressed in grey, beckoning the priest from the house and others say they have seen her shade dance like one abandoned in the oak glade. I feel her presence sometimes when I am in the little parlour where she spent much of her time, or walking in the fine knot garden; and sometimes there is a scent of roses where none blooms. She did betray her husband, yet the Wynters in their turn betrayed her. But I feel she is now at peace, believing her actions were preordained and would one day be of use to her descendants here, in the place she loved. Until that day comes, if come it does, her inmost secrets were best concealed from curious eyes. Anne Wynter

‘So Anne knew about this book too. But she only passed on Alys’s secret orally; she didn’t tell anyone else about the existence of a second manuscript…’ I said slowly. ‘Or the little verse.’

‘This maid that’s mentioned in Alys’s journal must have told her how to find it.’ Lucy turned a page or two and said, ‘Here’s where she says that her lover sent her a “line or two of verse, to her dark beauty”. Do you think that’s the one on the parchment?’

She reached over to pick it up and I said quickly, ‘Be careful—I think it may be rather valuable.’

‘WS?’ she mused, studying the initials.

But I’d spotted another addition on the back of it, in Anne’s bolder hand. I read out hollowly, ‘“These lines were penned by my true father, who was afterwards one of Lord Strange’s men and made a name for himself in London with playwriting…”’

‘Playwriting?’ Lucy looked up at my bemused face. ‘It’s not—it can’t be…?’

‘Shakespeare? According to Aunt Ottie, yes it is.’

Lucy went off into a peal of laughter, just as I had done when Ottie’d told me.

‘No, really, Mum, it can’t be true!’

‘It all looks pretty authentic to me,’ I said soberly. ‘You know, it does sound as if Alys expected the truth to come out one day, when it would help Winter’s End and her descend ants—and there is nothing more likely to put Winter’s End on the map than discovering something like this!’

‘It certainly would be mega, mega publicity, whether we could prove it was true or not,’ Lucy agreed. ‘Oh my God—Shakespeare’s my ancestor!’

‘The only thing is, Ottie was totally against me using our supposed Shakespeare connection even before we found all this, so I am sure she will hate the idea of making it public.’

‘We’ll have to persuade her,’ Lucy said, her eyes shining.

We called Ottie in next day for a secret powwow, while Hebe was down in the village for some meeting or other.

When we showed her what we’d found, she was amazed—and, I think, rather miffed that Lucy had been the one to discover the secret of the box, after all her years of custodianship. She was still reluctant to publicise the discovery, yet it was very clear, at least to Lucy and me, that this was the moment that Alys had predicted, when her secret could save Winter’s End.