Ferney (39 page)

‘I’m so sorry just to drop in,’ said the woman, ‘I didn’t have a phone number. I hope I’m not interrupting you. My name is Victoria Melhuish and Geoffrey
Pringle asked me to get in touch with you.’

‘Geoffrey Pringle?’

‘At the museum?’

Gally still looked blank.

‘Taunton Museum? You called on him recently.’

‘Oh yes . . . sorry.’

‘I’m the jewellery specialist, Stuart jewellery. Geoffrey asked me to take a look at the ring you showed him.’

Gally, raw through and through from abrasive history, found with irritation that she was too polite to refuse, though that was her strong inclination. She opened the plywood door with the one
surviving hinge on the cupboard under the caravan seat and got out the leather box in which the ring now lived. Victoria Melhuish bent over, watching as she opened the box, drawn to it and she lost
just a little of her poise as she saw the ring. She pounced on it, holding it up to the window, then produced from her bag a magnifier in a grey silk pouch and bent to study it.

‘Do sit down,’ said Gally, deriving a guilty shred of unworthy satisfaction from the difficulty the woman faced sliding into the narrow gap between the stained cushions and the
splintery edge of the table without hazarding her clothes.

Victoria Melhuish turned the ring over and over, staring through the eyepiece, then spoke without looking up. ‘This is very interesting,’ she said. ‘Would you mind if I did a
little more cleaning? Not too much, of course – just enough to see what we’re dealing with?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Gally. ‘I just need to go and see how the builders are getting on.’ She didn’t want to stand awkwardly by, marginalized, while her ring was put
through this process.

Rick called to her from upstairs as she went into the house and she climbed the stairs in time to see him nailing the last sheet of plasterboard into place on the wooden framework of a wall. The
rooms were delineated again, boxed off.

‘It looks a bit modern,’ she said, looking at the straight edges and the matt grey texture of the plasterboard.

‘It won’t when the plastering’s been done, I promise,’ he said. ‘Mark’s already at it down in the end room there. I’ve told him everything you said,
don’t worry – wobbly edges and not too regular. I think it goes against the grain a bit. He’s not used to doing it badly on purpose.’

‘Thanks, Rick. I’d hate it to look like new.’

‘I’ll take my hammer to it then, shall I? A few holes here and there?’

‘No need to go that far.’

She went downstairs and sat on the doorstep. The builders’ radio was playing Radio 3, which meant old Andrew must have been the last one to get at the tuning dial. The next one past would
have it back on a pop channel, she knew. Someone was sawing upstairs and the house was loud with their footsteps and their hammering. Through the window of the caravan, framed by dirty orange
curtains, she could see the jewellery specialist’s head bent over the table, working away, groping indirectly nearer to a truth that she knew she could reach by a much straighter path. She
imagined the ring as it would look when clean and the noises around her faded away as her mind went somewhere else, stepping straight into a deep puddle of memory for the second time that day. The
caravan went and the trees shuffled around. Monmouth, long hair tied roughly back, was standing in the lane, far too proud for the smock they’d put him in. They wanted him gone, out of the
way, now he was fed and changed. Madox, risking his neck to guide them, was waiting impatiently for Grey and Byser to follow and old, wasted Mother Mogg, the last person they wanted to see, the
woman with the biggest mouth in Penselwood, hobbled into view around the corner with her eyes widening at the unexpected sight of strangers. Then the Duke, taking in the old woman’s
scrofulous swollen neck, instead of turning his back and hurrying away, was advancing towards her like the Lord God with hands spread out to touch her on the neck and Mother Mogg was recoiling and
staring at him in wonder as he blessed her in tones that belied the smock.

Grey had pulled him away, back into the yard, as Mother Mogg had gone off at her best speed, looking constantly back.

‘Do NOT do that, sir.’

‘She has the King’s Evil. I have the touch. I
am
the rightful king. I must cure when I can and that will be one of the signs.’

‘It’s
your
neck you must save now,’ Grey said, then looked back at Ferney and Gally with a grim face. ‘Hide all well. Do not be found with traces of us or it
will go badly for you,’ and then Madox had urged them away.

In a space in the middle of the yard, a woman’s face appeared, hanging in the air, and said, ‘I say, do come and look.’ The caravan slowly developed around it as Gally fought
her way back. Victoria Melhuish was staring at her. ‘Do come and see,’ she repeated. ‘It’s come up well.’

The ring lay on a square of cloth on the table. There was an astringent smell in the air and a small array of plastic bottles was ranged next to it.

‘Thank you so much for letting me see it,’ the woman said. ‘I think you’ve made quite an important find here.’ She picked the ring up carefully. ‘Do you see
the cypher?’

Under the crystal, below the king’s enamelled head was a device of two intersecting semicircles.

‘The double C,’ she said. ‘Charles the Second, done in gold wire. Now that doesn’t by itself mean it was a royal ring but it is present on the rings that we know Charles
gave to special favourites, and there are some other rather special things about this ring. Look at the hoop for one thing.’

The outside of the hoop was decorated with damaged enamel in an intricate pattern, gold showing through the black. Inside, Gally could see lettering.

‘Use this.’ Victoria Melhuish held out the magnifier.

‘ “Prepared be to follow me”,’ read Gally.

‘Now,’ said the other woman, ‘I’ve freed the bezel, though we have to be careful. It swings round, you see. There’s the crystal and the portrait on the front and
there’s the signet ring on the back.’ She took the ring and gently turned the bezel round. Gally used the magnifier again and found herself looking at an indented shield.

‘It’s the Stuart royal arms,’ the woman said, ‘and do you see the initials? They’re reversed too, of course.’

‘JC?’ said Gally.

‘That’s right. Now this might be a coincidence but there is a record of a royal ring given to the Duke of Monmouth and those initials would fit.’

‘I thought he was Jamie Scott?’

Victoria Melhuish raised an eyebrow in appreciation. ‘That was the country name for him, I think, but in all the court references he was known as James Crofts.’

‘JC.’

‘Well, we mustn’t jump to conclusions, but it certainly needs further study and the inscription is rather interesting.’

‘ “Prepared be to follow me.” You think that was Monmouth’s call to arms?’

‘Oh no, not for a moment. I should think Charles might have had that engraved as a gentle reminder to his natural son that he owed his loyalty to his father. The question is really, how
did this come to be under your step?’

‘Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?’

‘Of course with what happened after Sedgemoor, anything identifying Monmouth’s supporters was better off buried.’

A tickle of unease.

‘Because it was dangerous?’

‘George Jeffreys and the Bloody Assize? I should say so. I think they executed a hundred and fifty in Taunton alone, didn’t they?’

They’d come in the night looking for friends of Richard Madox. The knowledge hit Gally like a punch. She flinched and the woman looked at her, surprised, but mistook it for an invitation
to carry on.

‘Well, King James didn’t want any more plots so he made quite sure everybody got the message. There’s a horrific royal warrant telling them how to do it.’ Victoria
Melhuish had an odd enthusiasm about her that suggested her tight elegance restrained something darker. ‘They had to hang some of them, then quarter them, boil the bits and coat them in tar.
Then they displayed . . .’

‘No, stop. That’s enough.’ Gally lurched out of the caravan and was loudly sick into the nettles.

‘Oh my goodness. I am so sorry,’ said the woman, appearing at the caravan doorway behind her with a concerned look. ‘Was it what I said?’

‘Not your fault,’ said Gally weakly. ‘I’m pregnant.’

Boilman and Burnman. The names rang in her head. Boilman and Burnman.

‘Are you all right now?’

Gally nodded.

‘It’s a question of what happens to the ring now, you see. I wondered whether it would be best if I took it to the museum for proper conservation. It should be catalogued.’

There was no strength left in her for argument.

‘Oh . . . I suppose . . .’

Mike drove blessedly in at that moment, the car’s roof-rack loaded with sagging rolls of matting, interrupting them. Gally introduced them.

‘I was just asking your wife if it would be all right to take the ring to the museum.’ She smiled at Mike brightly.

Mike had the sense to defer to Gally and the brief pause had let her catch her breath. She felt a sharp sense of anxiety. ‘How long would you need it?’

Victoria Melhuish pondered her words. ‘Well, the important thing is that the law has to be observed of course. You’ve done exactly the right thing by informing the museum and of
course there’ll have to be a coroner’s inquiry.’

‘About what?’ said Gally startled.

‘Ah. Perhaps you don’t know the system. It would probably be classed as treasure trove, you see.’

‘Would it?’

‘Any gold or silver object found hidden with its ownership unknown belongs to the Crown. Something like this, of historical importance, would usually go to the museum. You would be
compensated for its value, of course.’

I don’t want compensation, Gally thought wildly. What does she mean, ‘ownership unknown’? It was given to me. She opened her mouth to say so and in a confusion of doubt stopped
herself in time. Mike, watching her closely, seemed to pick up on her distress.

‘I’m sure compensation’s not the issue,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we can discuss it then bring it over in the next few days.’

The woman raised an eyebrow and looked doubtful and Mike plunged on. ‘Not, of course, that we doubt what you say, but we’ve never met you before . . .’

The woman looked rather shocked, as if her honesty was being impugned. ‘Oh, I see. Well, you could always ring the museum if you’re in doubt.’

‘Yes, we will,’ said Mike ushering her towards her car.

‘You will put the ring somewhere safe, won’t you?’ she said as she got in reluctantly. ‘It must have quite a considerable commercial value.’

When she’d gone, Gally gave Mike a hug. ‘Thank you. I thought she was planning to go off with it right there.’

‘Poor you.’

‘They’ll have to have it, though – won’t they?’

‘Do you feel bad about that?’

She looked at the ring. Boilman and Burnman and tarred joints of quartered humans hung on hooks to scare the people out of ever massing against their king again. She shuddered. ‘No,
perhaps not.’

She parked at Yeovil Hospital and made her way, despite misdirection, to Ferney’s ward. She was nervous. The sister told her where to go.

‘He’s doing all right,’ she said. ‘He keeps us in stitches with the funny things he says.’

‘What sort of funny things?’

‘Oh, it’s the medication, I expect, but he does have some odd ideas. When Dr Barraclough asked him if it was his first heart attack, he said he’d had lots.’

Ferney was propped up in bed, very pale, and she couldn’t at first see anything but the old man’s body around him. He saw her immediately and gave a small smile.

‘How are you?’

‘Still here,’ he said.

‘What have you been saying? The sister’s asking questions.’

Ferney made a face. ‘I’m not quite myself sometimes and they keep giving me these chemicals.’ He shrugged it off. ‘Did you read my letter?’

‘Look, Ferney, before we get to that, I wasn’t sure if I should come – in case it was bad for you. It does feel different now, though. At your house, I felt I was killing you
by being too close. Does that make sense?’

‘Killing? No. Helping me die, maybe.’

‘I don’t feel that now.’

‘They’ve propped me up with chemicals and that. Life’s hung its hat up again. It’ll be that way for a while. I want an answer, Gally. Did you read my letter?’

‘Yes.’

‘It shocked you.’

‘Of course it shocked me.’

‘Have you . . . have you been able to check it?’

‘Well, not really. Not yet. Other things came instead.’

He watched her closely and she forgot his frailty in those timeless eyes.

‘Do you remember seeing your first clock?’ she said.

He looked puzzled, then thought about it and nodded. ‘We both saw it.’

‘Well, tell me then,’ she said. ‘You and me – we went to see it. Where was it?’

‘Shaston, I think. Yes, I’m sure.’

Shaston. It was just a daydream then. Shaston, not Shaftesbury. Shaston?

‘Where is Shaston?’ she said slowly.

‘Shaftesbury now, isn’t it? They called it Sophonia for some silly reason for a while, way back when, but it was Shaston for a long time – oh, right up to recently.’

She surprised herself by feeling pleased.

‘You remembered that by yourself,’ he said and his eyes gleamed.

‘Yes,’ and she couldn’t restrain her smile.

He gripped her hand. ‘What did you remember about it?’

‘You – on the way back, saying it was the end of eternity and all our time would have a price on it from then on’

‘Huh. I was right, too, wasn’t I?’

‘You were.’

‘Do you remember what it was like before?’

‘Tell me.’

‘There was that daft man. Some lord or other, I forget. Anyway he had the old manor for a time and he saw what the monks did over at Stavordale – they had this great water clock they
filled up every day and every night for their services, so he had to have one too. That was the way – that and candles. But there wasn’t such a thing as a regular hour, you see. They
just divided up the daytime into twelve and the night-time into another twelve. It meant an hour on a summer day was twice as long as it was in winter. Do you remember that?’