House of Echoes (48 page)
‘She’s got tired and gone off to bed. And I think that’s what I’m going to do as well.’
‘No. No, wait. Let’s try for just a while longer, please.’ Joss dropped to her haunches and picked up the trowel. She dug it into the earth and heard the small chink of metal. The sound electrified the others. They turned. Luke moved closer and knelt beside her. ‘What is it?’
‘Here.’ Joss lifted the trowel full of soil and ran it through her fingers. Left lying in her palm was a small gold ring.
Joss took a deep breath. ‘It’s her message.’
Luke nodded. He caught her eye and gave a rueful, private smile. He dug more carefully this time, inserting the spade almost
gently, transferring the lifted earth to the steadily growing pile on the floor behind them.
They found the body at about a metre depth. There was no coffin; there were no clothes; no flesh now, just the bones, lying on a floor of earth much harder than the soft friable soil which had lain on top of them. Using the trowel Luke lifted away as much of the earth as he could without touching the bones and they stood looking down at the skeleton before them. There were two other rings on the finger bones and a gold chain around the neck, an earth-encrusted enamelled pendant lying amongst the narrow, fragile ribs.
It was my Lady Katherine
Joss knelt down. Her eyes had filled with tears. ‘Poor girl. She was so small.’
‘How are we going to move her?’ David put his hand on Joss’s shoulder.
She shrugged. The face she raised to him and Luke was white and strained. ‘First we must dig the new grave.’
‘Tonight?’
Joss nodded. ‘Tonight. While it’s dark. Then the sun can warm her in the morning.’
Natalie offered to stay with the bones; it seemed somehow indecent to leave them alone now they were exposed. The others went out into the garden with torches. Joss had already chosen the spot in her mind. It was perfect: out beyond the lake, where the wild roses tangled over the old pergola and the sun dial registered the passing of the hours.
They dug the hole in the old rose bed, the earth soft and cold under the clogging November mist which had closed over the garden as the wind dropped and the rain petered away.
Joss emptied the carved cedar box from the study which contained piles of old sheet music. She lined it with her own fringed scarf of rough wild silk and then on her knees lifted the skull from the earth as the others watched. The rest of the bones she picked from the soil and put them reverently into the box and with them the rings and chain and pendant, then last of all the wax dolls, still wrapped in their blue scarf from the dresser drawer, then she closed the lid at last.
Luke picked up the box and carried it slowly up the stairs.
The garden was dank and cold as they walked after him across
the wet grass and under the pergola to the little grave. Puffing he set the box down beside it. ‘Are you going to say something?’
Joss stood staring down. ‘I don’t know what to say. I don’t think she wants our prayers.’
‘She wants peace, Joss. Peace and forgiveness,’ Natalie murmured quietly. ‘Then all the other spirits here can rest too; the lost boys from all the centuries and their fathers, the poor men she cursed and hounded to their deaths in her pain and hatred.’
‘And the king.’ Joss met her eye. ‘What about the king?’
‘I think you’ll find he’s already gone, Joss. You were very special to him, remember.’ She smiled. She would never, Joss knew, reveal what they had talked about with Edward of England, the sun of York, who, had he been a man, would have fathered Joss’s unborn child and who might have been her father, and her mother’s father, and her grandmother’s father before that, and who was, with Katherine de Vere, her ancestor by blood and true descent.
‘I wish the moon was out.’ Joss looked down into the blackness of the hole.
‘It will be, look.’ Janet had been the only one looking up at the sky. Behind the mist the full moon was a wraith high up above the wrack. As they watched it found a gap in the drifting cloud and for a moment shone down into the garden.
David and Luke between them lowered the box into the ground and Joss and then Natalie each threw down a handful of soil. For a minute they waited as the moonlight ran light fingers over the carved wood then as the mist returned like a veil across the garden David lifted the spade. As the first shovel full of earth poured down into the grave they all saw the spray of white roses as the darkness returned.
It was my Lady Katherine
Muffled in the mist the voice seemed to drift across the lake.
It was my Lady Katherine
It was my Lady Katherine
Each time the voice was further away.
They looked at each other.
‘I shall miss them.’ Joss smiled.
Natalie shook her head. ‘Rascals,’ she said. ‘Let them join their mum. The only children at Belheddon should be real children.’
‘It’s done, Joss.’ David had patted down the last of the earth
with the back of the spade. ‘Are you going to put something here to mark it?’
Joss shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘I just can’t believe that it’s really over. That there’s no more danger.’
‘There’s no more danger,’ Natalie said firmly. She took Joss’s cold hand. ‘Come on. It’s time to go in. Leave Katherine to her moonlight.’
Slowly they made their way back across the grass. On the terrace Joss stopped and looked back. The garden was silent.
The echoes were gone.
Daily Telegraph
17th July 1995
To Luke and Jocelyn Grant a daughter (Alice Laura
Katherine) a sister for Tom and Ned.
Sunday Times
September 1995
Son of the Sword
by Jocelyn Grant (Hibberds)
An accomplished first novel written with wit and pace. Set largely in the author’s own house during the years of the Wars of the Roses, Richard Mortimer and Ann de Vere tread a heady tightrope of romance, adventure and near disaster which culminates in an extraordinarily satisfactory ending, leaving the reader clinging to the edge of his chair. Highly recommended. I shall look forward to seeing more from this author.
B
elheddon does not exist. Nor did this branch of the de Vere family. King Edward IV had many mistresses during his lifetime. The names of the last two are unknown; the story of Katherine de Vere, woven through this tale, is entirely fictional. Accusations of witchcraft and sorcery were made at Edward’s court both against his queen and other high-born women around him, but whether these were merely political propaganda or substantiated in truth is for the reader to decide for him or herself.
As always so many people have provided me with help and information in the research of this book. I should particularly like to thank James Maitland of Lay & Wheeler in Colchester for his suggestions on the contents of the Belheddon cellar, (any spelling mistakes in the wine names are my fault entirely) Janet Hanlon for her assistance and Carole Blake for her attempts at keeping my characters’ drinking habits within bounds! Also Rachel Hore for her editorial advice during what must have been the hottest days in East Anglia since the reign of Edward IV! I should also like to thank my son Adrian for his help with research and Peter Shepherd, Dr Robert Brownell and my son Jonathan for their help in sorting out my computer crash, computer crises and computer panic! I think I prefer to use a quill pen!
A lost child in the Welsh borders;
a violent attack in London;
an epic battle between the Celts and the Romans.
What can possibly link them?
Read on for an extract from
BARBARA ERSKINE’S
thrilling new novel
,
The
Warrior’s Princess
The gods were with her. She managed to get a flight that same evening. Leaving most of her belongings locked in the car in the long-term car park at Heathrow, she settled into her seat with a huge sigh of relief as the plane took off and angled sharply over London.
She arrived at last at the palazzo in the early hours of the morning. When she climbed out of the taxi, paid the driver and dragged her case to the door the street was, she noticed wearily, as busy as it would be at midday at home. She had no time for any other observations. In seconds she was being enveloped in hugs and escorted up the great marble staircase which led to Kim’s front door on the first floor. Minutes after that she was seated in front of a crisp glass of Frascati and a bowl of pasta in the echoing old-fashioned kitchen.
‘So?’ Steph sat down opposite her and leaned forward on her elbows. ‘What happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ Jess took a mouthful of the
fettuccine alla
marinara
, savouring the flavours with delight. She had not eaten since her motorway stop, so long ago it seemed like another era. A warm fuzzy sense of security was beginning to drift over her.
Kim spooned the last of the sauce onto Jess’s plate. She glanced at Steph. ‘No questions now, Steph,’ she said sternly. ‘Jess is exhausted. We’ll catch up on all her news in the morning.’
In less than an hour Jess had taken a long relaxing bath and fallen into bed. Almost before her head touched the pillow she was asleep. But her sleep was restless and it wasn’t long before she woke suddenly and lay staring into the dark. Her head had been full of music. Elgar. The voice of Rhodri Price, filling the dark spaces of her brain. Except it wasn’t Rhodri Price, it was Caratacus.
* * *
Tall, his strong weather-beaten features drawn with pain, his hair threaded now with silver amongst the thick auburn locks, he was standing in the doorway, his shoulder and upper arm still bandaged from his battle wound, his wrists shackled with heavy iron manacles, staring in towards his wife and daughter. ‘Where is he?’ he asked. ‘Where is my son?’
Cerys clasped her hands in anguish as he stepped into the room. Behind him the guard slammed the door and they heard the bolt slide across.
‘We searched. We searched everywhere. The Romans searched. They put the whole legion to the search –’ Her voice rose in anguish. ‘Eigon hid them in the wood above the battlefield. To keep them safe. But when we looked they had gone.’
Eigon had started to tremble. She stared at her father in terror, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I told them to hide. I told them not to come out.’
For a brief second his face was consumed with anger; with an enormous effort he controlled it. ‘They told me. Can we hope our own people found them? Can they be keeping them safe?’
‘That is my prayer,’ Cerys said softly. ‘I pray every day to the goddess Bride to keep them safe. You must not blame Eigon. She did what she thought was right.’ Her voice was softened by a smile as she turned towards her daughter but there was a hard edge of pain to it that Eigon heard with a small whimper of unhappiness.
Caradoc studied his wife’s face. ‘I had no intention of blaming her. Come here, child.’ He held out his arms, awkward because of the chains and Eigon ran to him, leaning against his knees, worming her way into his embrace. ‘You did what you thought was right, sweetheart, and you were very brave.’ He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘And who knows,’ he glanced up at his wife, his face strained, ‘it may be that Togo and Glads are the ones who will survive to fight another day.’
The music faded and Jess slept again. Next time she woke she went and stood by the window looking out into the darkness, listening to the noises of the night. Her window faced away from the noisy street outside. From somewhere she could hear a tinkling of water, but behind it there was still a distant subdued hum of traffic. She smiled to herself. The Eternal City. She remembered
how excited they had all been when Kim had announced her engagement to her Roman aristocrat. They had all vowed to keep in touch for ever, vowed with her, to learn Italian. Jess grimaced at the memory. Kim had become fluent over the years, of course she had. Her own and Steph’s attempts at the language had flagged almost at once. Her promises to herself that she would one day read
La Commedia Divina
in the original had been ignominiously shunted aside, along with her recognition that her mastery of the language would probably be limited to a few useful phrases mostly involving food.
When she woke again it was late and she lay staring with delight round the large room to which she had been shown the night before. Too tired to take much notice of the room lit only by a shaded bedside light, she had taken in very little of its detail beyond the fact that it was comfortable and had its own en suite bathroom. Now she found she was lying in a baroque four-poster bed, its curtains open, tied back against the posts with brocade swags; at the windows the threadbare damask curtains were only half-drawn and sunlight poured through onto exotic old rugs filling the room with rich warm light. Climbing to her feet she went over to look out and found she was staring down into a courtyard garden somewhere in the quiet inner heart of the palazzo. The tantalising sound of water she had heard in the night, came, she discovered, from an ornate fountain at the centre of an intricate pattern of formal beds and gravelled paths.
‘Are you awake?’ Steph appeared in the doorway behind her. She was carrying two cups of coffee.
Jess turned away from the window and faced her, pushing her hair back from her face with both hands. ‘This is heaven! I hope Kim really doesn’t mind me turning up at such short notice.’ She realised that for the first time in ages she felt completely safe.
‘Kim is delighted. She rattles round in this apartment.’ For a second Steph frowned. ‘I think she is genuinely lonely, you know. It was fabulous when Stefano was alive but now I suspect she only has a few real friends here and most of them bugger off in the summer to go somewhere cooler. I met some of them the other night but most of them were about to leave Rome for the holidays.’ Cradling her own cup she sat down on the bed, swinging her legs. Her feet were bare. ‘I am so pleased you decided to come, Jessie. We’re going to have such fun.’
