House of Shadows (19 page)

She wanted to read on but her eyes felt tired and gritty now. She knew she needed to take a break but she was not sure she would sleep.

Drawings for a new set of engravings lay scattered across the kitchen table where she had left them a little earlier in the evening. She had decided to produce a set of glasses showing episodes from the life of Elizabeth, the Winter Queen. It felt appropriate to draw on aspects of Ashdown’s history for her work now that she lived here. She had already sketched out the picture she remembered from those stories of her childhood, Elizabeth in a long hooded cloak escaping in a carriage, her baby in her arms, the towers and spires of Prague lost in the whirling snows. She had also started on one of Elizabeth being crowned queen whilst the gunpowder plotters whispered treason behind her. She decided to download a biography of Elizabeth’s life, both to help her research further scenes for the engravings but also to give more background to the woman herself. She also probably needed a book about the Knights of the Rosy Cross. This was going to cost her a fortune.

Lavinia and Elizabeth; they were so different and yet it felt to Holly as though there were distinct parallels between them. Both had been strong women in their own way. Both
had to an extent been lost from history. Both had stories to tell.

Holly took Bonnie’s lead out of the kitchen drawer. It was time for their bedtime walk but she had become so accustomed to living in a city that she had forgotten there were no streetlights here. She had no torch and hadn’t picked one up yet.

Bonnie bounded out of the door undeterred by the blackness outside. Holly followed more slowly. The light from the mill windows illuminated the uneven path, the picket fence, and the shallow empty bowl of the millpond where Bonnie was now eagerly sniffing around. The night was warm with the faintest shade of paler blue fading into the black night sky. No breeze stirred the trees tonight. A half moon spun silver shadows through the trees.

Bonnie paused in her foraging. Her head went up, alert, ears pricked as though she had heard someone approaching. Holly listened too but there was nothing to indicate that a person or an animal was close by; no snapping of twigs, no footfall, nothing but deep silence. Very slowly, Bonnie’s head turned as though she was watching someone – or something – walk along the path towards the mill. She was quite still and when the fur rose in a ruff along her neck and spine Holly felt the same pricking in the back of her neck too. Suddenly the silence and the darkness felt thick and oppressive. Atavistic fear breathed gooseflesh along her skin.

‘Bonnie!’ She wanted to shout but her voice came out as a dry croak.

For a moment Bonnie did not respond, then she looked
at Holly and wagged her tail slightly. With one last lingering stare she trotted across the clearing to Holly’s side. A tawny owl coasted down from the trees like a ghost.

Holly’s heart was pounding. She spun around, making for the picket gate and the shelter of the mill. Through the close press of the woodland, for a split second, she caught a flash of white: a house glimpsed through the darkness, tall and pale and perfect in the moonlight, the golden ball on the cupola gleaming.

Walking quickly, refusing to look either to the left or the right, Holly marched back to the mill with Bonnie pressing close at her heels. She almost ran inside and slammed the door, thrusting the bolt home with hands that were shaking. The bright light, the ordinary familiarity of the room, seemed to make a mockery of the fear that had gripped her a moment before and she felt her heartbeat steady.

‘Damn it!’ Holly let out a sharp sigh, leaning against the table for support whilst her nerves settled. She was starting to feel as though she was teetering on the edge of sanity, seeing a house where none existed, getting spooked by Bonnie when all the dog had been doing was sniffing the night air, feeling as though Lavinia was starting to haunt her, flitting through her thoughts like a shadow. It was easy to let the darkness and the silence get to her when she was not used to the isolation.

She had not drawn the curtains and reached over the back of the sofa to twitch the old gingham pattern closed. As she leant across, something caught her eye, a set of initials, RV and a date of 1801 etched on the glass in the bottom right corner of the pane. She traced the writing with one finger,
feeling the roughness of the scratches against her skin. The glass felt cold.

1801. That had been when Lavinia said the surveyor called Verity had come to Ashdown. And on Ben’s list there had been a third name: Robert Verity.

Shivering for a third time she whisked the curtains together and shut out the night. The world shrank to the lighted room and suddenly she was ambushed with loneliness. Sometimes it was like this; the feelings came out of nowhere, overwhelming her, terrifyingly powerful.

On impulse she keyed in Ben’s home number into her mobile. She knew in her heart of hearts that there couldn’t be any news. Tasha would have told her. She just wanted to talk to someone who knew Ben well.

The number rang eight times before the answering machine came in. ‘Natasha isn’t here to take your call at the moment …’

Holly pressed end call without leaving a message. The recording didn’t even mention Ben any more. It was as though her brother had been erased. She could feel him sliding away from her. No matter how she wanted to hold on to him, he was slipping from her grasp.

Wassenaer Hof, The Hague, August 1635

E
lizabeth did not go down to the courtyard to wish Craven Godspeed. To do such a thing would have drawn attention to his mission, which they had both agreed would be a mistake. Craven was always running errands for her and so this latest trip of his had not been much remarked upon. He came, he went, and few people questioned him because he was not a man who offered or invited confidences.

She watched from the window of the gallery as his servants pulled the straps tight on his saddlebags. There was one woman outside making enough of a scene over Craven’s departure to entertain the entire court. Margaret Carpenter, her pretty face puffy with tears, yet miraculously still appearing winsome, was hanging on to his stirrup and begging another kiss. Elizabeth was pleased to see that Craven looked irritated rather than gratified by this
ostentatious display of affection. He said something to Margaret that set her face flaming and then he was gone, the echo of horse’s hooves loud on the cobbles for a few moments before the sound faded and the babble of the wind washed it away.

‘Madam.’

Elizabeth jumped. She had not been aware that she was standing so close to the window that her hand had been resting against the leaded pane. She hoped no one had noticed. As she turned away she caught a brief flash of Margaret Carpenter’s face uplifted to the window. Despite her earlier tears the woman was smiling, the sort of smile that told Elizabeth that she knew she had what Elizabeth wanted. Then Margaret pulled her cloak closer about her hunched shoulders and hurried to the door, head bent.

‘What is it?’ Elizabeth tried not to snap. She felt anxious; anxious that Craven’s mission should be a success, anxious for his safety and, shamefully, still anxious about his loyalty.

‘Her Royal Highness the Princess of Orange sends you an invitation to join her for a masque this evening.’ One of Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting, Ursula Grange, had approached her and was curtseying, the invitation extended in her hand. Elizabeth felt another sharp stab of irritation. Masques and balls and plays … It felt as though all she did these days was write letters, have her portrait painted and indulge in merriment. She did not want to go to the Binnenhof tonight. The Princess of Orange had once been plain Amalia Solms, one of her own ladies, before marriage had elevated her to royal status. Amalia liked to consider herself the first lady of Dutch society now, and Elizabeth humoured
her whims, but it was ridiculous really. Amalia was not of royal birth nor was she a queen. Elizabeth outranked her in every possible way.

She sighed. She knew how petty such quibbles were. It was a measure of her lack of true power that she gave them a moment’s thought. And she knew she must accept the invitation. The dancing and the feasting and the merriment were as much a part of the role she played as the political diplomacy was. Frivolity was a cloak, a disguise. People were a deal more indiscreet around a Queen they thought shallow and given over to pleasure. They spoke carelessly whilst she guarded her secrets.

‘How delightful,’ she said, taking the invitation and dropping it casually onto her desk, where one of her monkeys seized it and started to rip the paper apart. ‘Please reply that I shall certainly be there.’

Dancing whilst the Palatine lands burn again,
she thought. She could imagine what her enemies would say about that.

Had they already seized Frederick’s body? Were his bones even now scattered to the four winds and the treasures of the Rosy Cross stolen from his tomb?

She shuddered. There was a fire in the grate but she could not feel its warmth.

Fire.

She had told Craven to destroy the crystal mirror. She did not want it back. When she had been a child the mirror and the pearl had been a pair, never separated. In her innocence she had thought them no more than trinkets matched in beauty. Then she had witnessed their destructive power and she never wanted the two of them to be reunited.
She wanted to destroy the Sistrin too, yet she found that she could not, and it was this inability to rule the power of the jewel that made her profoundly uneasy. For if she did not have the strength to resist the dark arts then how could William Craven be trusted to do her will? She did not want to doubt him. Yet still she did.

M
ark’s offices were not at all as Holly had imagined they would be. She had expected lots of wood, chrome and light pouring in through huge windows in the style of his house, a converted barn that Fran had pointed out to her a couple of days before. Here in the old stable yard, though, little development work had been done as yet. The office itself was signposted in a discreet corner and when Holly knocked a little tentatively on the door and stuck her head inside it was cool and dark. It was also shabby. There was a rug on the wooden floor, worn so threadbare that the pattern was almost invisible, a few wooden chairs and a laptop on a battered old table. A door led through to a second room that appeared to be piled high with tottering towers of paper. The walls were rough and whitewashed. A rickety wooden staircase in the corner led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

Mark was working at the desk by the window, sketching
out what looked like a design for a loft conversion. He looked up when Holly came in and she judged from his expression that he was about as pleased to see her as he would have been the plague.

‘Hi,’ she said, determined to be light and friendly. ‘How are you?’

Mark stood up and stretched. There was something very physical about the movement and it plunged Holly straight back into memories of the night they had spent together at the mill. Despite the shadowy coolness of the room it felt as though heat was rising inside her. How did a man who worked at a desk get a physique like that? She remembered the outdoor trousers and desert boots. Probably he was a hands-on sort of boss. Fran had implied as much. And she needed to stop staring at him.

‘You mentioned that Ben had come to have a look at some maps and plans,’ she said, rushing into speech when he didn’t answer her. ‘I wondered if I could arrange to take a look at the stuff he was researching? I don’t mean now,’ she added quickly. ‘Sometime convenient …’

When you aren’t here.

Mark ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s convenient now,’ he said.

Great.

‘I’ve got Bonnie with me,’ Holly said.

Mark smiled. It was the smile she remembered from the day they had met, high wattage, seriously dangerous. Her heart skipped a beat.

‘Bring her in,’ Mark said. ‘This used to be the old estate
office. There must have been hundreds of dogs in here down the years.’

‘It’s not what I expected,’ Holly said, coming in and shutting the door. Immediately it felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. The impact of Mark’s physical presence in so enclosed a space had her heart thumping. She struggled to keep control. Perhaps she had been naïve but she hadn’t expected to be aware of him like this.

Bonnie evidently shared none of her awkwardness. She took herself off to the dog-shaped space beneath the desk where she promptly curled up.

‘We’re converting this bit last,’ Mark said, ‘once the rest of the site is finished. We have a smart office and showroom for visitors over the other side of the development but I like working here. It’s …’ He paused, shrugged. ‘It’s authentic.’

‘And what you build isn’t?’ Holly said.

Mark winced. ‘You’re very direct.’

‘Sorry,’ Holly said. She didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot yet again.

‘We use authentic designs and building materials to create a comfortable, modern and updated version of a period property,’ Mark said. ‘But if you’d prefer no bathroom and a primitive kitchen we can do that too.’

‘The facilities at the mill are quite basic enough for me,’ Holly said. She felt awkward, uncertain where to go, whether to sit and if so where. Mark however seemed impervious to the tension in the room. He had half-turned away from her and was making a fuss of Bonnie who was gazing up at him with shameless flirtation, eyes half-closed.

‘We made your brother an offer on the mill when we took
on the contract here,’ he said. ‘We thought it would be a great addition to the development at Ashdown.’

‘Oh.’ That was yet another thing that Ben hadn’t told her, Holly thought. ‘What did he say?’ she asked.

‘He wouldn’t sell,’ Mark said, straightening up. ‘And he said half of it belonged to you anyway.’

‘That’s right,’ Holly said. ‘It does.’

‘Family inheritance?’ Mark cocked a brow at her. ‘I think Ben mentioned you used to visit here years ago.’

‘Yes,’ Holly said. She realised that her voice was husky. There was an ache in her chest. She cleared her throat. She certainly wasn’t going to cry all over him again. Not after last time.

‘Is there any news?’ Mark said, then as she shook her head, ‘I’m sorry. It’s very difficult, not knowing.’

Holly noticed that unlike a lot of people he did not break eye contact nor shift uncomfortably when he spoke of Ben. Nor did he offer platitudes or tell Holly how she must feel. The matter-of-factness was easier to deal with than any amount of sympathy. She remembered that Mark had been a soldier and thought he was probably accustomed to giving people bad news, dealing with grief, looking it in the eye rather than shuffling away with half-hearted condolence.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s pretty tough.’

Their eyes held for a long moment and she felt her nerves tighten. It didn’t matter whether or not she chose to ignore it; the connection between them was still there.

‘Well,’ Mark said, ‘as I said before, most of the papers relating to the estate are held in the Berkshire Records
Office. You’d need to go to Reading to look at those. I showed Ben this map—’ He opened an old filing cabinet and took out a rolled-up paper, spreading it out on his desk. It was hand drawn, with geographical features, historic monuments and other markers showing on the landscape. There was a house in the centre, tall, with a cupola on top and a golden ball. Around it the woods spread out, shaped like a rose, with eight sections like petals.

‘Oh!’ Holly was entranced. ‘How beautiful!’

‘It’s early nineteenth century, I think,’ Mark said. ‘The landscape was mapped shortly before the house burned down.’

‘I had no idea,’ Holly said. ‘No idea the woods are shaped like a rose.’

‘You don’t see it when you are on the ground,’ Mark said. ‘Unusual, isn’t it? I think it must have been deliberate. Although Ashdown was originally an ancient hunting forest, this shape was probably designed by the first Earl of Craven when he was building the house and pleasure grounds.’

‘RV.’ Holly traced the initials at the bottom of the map. ‘Robert Verity.’

‘Who?’ Mark’s voice had sharpened.

Holly jumped. ‘What? Oh—’ She looked up. ‘The surveyor who mapped Ashdown Park in 1801 was called Robert Verity.’

‘How do you know that?’ Mark said. He sat on the corner of the desk, one booted foot swinging. ‘I’ve searched everywhere for that information and there’s nothing, no documents, no references.’

Holly hesitated. ‘Ben found out,’ she said. ‘There’s a diary.
A memoir, I suppose …’ She patted her bag. ‘I’ve got it here.’ She had been intending to nip along to the café after she had seen Mark and have a chat to Fran about Lavinia’s book.

‘May I see?’ Mark asked. He hooked his foot around the chair and pulled it out for her. ‘Would you like coffee? It’s not up to Fran’s standard, I’m afraid.’

‘Tea, if you have it,’ Holly said, willing to accept the slight thawing in relations, watching him stroll into the inner office and flick the switch on the kettle. ‘Thanks.’

When Mark brought the mugs back through she had taken Lavinia’s memoir out and laid it on the table next to the map Robert Verity had drawn. The sun gleamed on the rich green of the cover of the book. ‘What a beautiful-looking thing,’ Mark said softly.

‘It’s the diary of a courtesan,’ Holly said. ‘Quite racy. She was called Lavinia Flyte. She was here as Lord Evershot’s mistress at the beginning of 1801.’

‘When the estate was mapped,’ Mark said. ‘I see. May I?’ He picked up the memoir and it fell open somewhere in the middle.

‘He took me to his chamber for several hours,’ he read, ‘until finally we were interrupted by the steward who came knocking to inform his lordship that Sir Francis Bignall had called to discuss the purchase of a hawk. What a relief that was, for I fear that Evershot was inexhaustible in his sexual demands and after he had belaboured me for several hours I was near bored to death …’
Mark paused, looking up.

‘I did warn you,’ Holly said, blushing. ‘It isn’t an architectural manual.’

‘Evidently not,’ Mark said. His lips twitched. ‘Poor Lord Evershot; immortalised for his lack of prowess.’

‘The bit about Robert Verity is here,’ Holly said hastily, taking the book from him. Their fingers touched. She felt even more hot and bothered. She found the page where Lavinia described Robert Verity’s work and handed it back.

‘Fascinating,’ Mark said after a moment. ‘I wonder if Verity was a soldier, trained by the Ordnance Survey. They were mapping the whole of southern England around that time as part of the Napoleonic War defences. Even if Evershot hired him privately he could well have been in the military. I’ll check that out.’

‘That would be really interesting,’ Holly said. ‘You hadn’t come across the name before?’

Mark shook his head. ‘No. It’s weird because we have all the maps and drawings and none of them were signed except with those initials. I’d given up hope of discovering who the surveyor was.’ He checked the date at the beginning of the book. ‘February 1801 was just before the house burned down,’ he said.

Holly gave a little shiver. It was warm in the estate office but suddenly she felt cold. Bonnie slumbered on in the patch of sunlight, unaware.

‘How did it happen?’ she asked.

‘Apparently workmen were making repairs to the roof,’ Mark said. ‘They left a brazier untended and it overturned and burned the whole place down. It’s said that the fire was so fierce that the cupola – the little domed tower on the roof – crashed all the way down through three floors and shattered the roof of the wine cellar beneath. We went down
into what’s left of the cellar when we were charting the estate – there’s still blackened glass and stone lying all over the place.’

Holly shuddered, closing her eyes. She thought of the beautiful white house swallowed by fire, the white house she could have sworn she had seen only the previous night. It had looked so real in the moonlight. Fire was a terrible thing, eating through the fabric of a building with terrifying speed, destroying everything in its path.

Suddenly her ears filled with noise; the crackle of flames leaping twenty feet into the dark sky, the groan and snap of timbers. She saw a tall chimney topple in a shower of stone. Something was falling from the sky, molten lead, like silver rain. She felt the cold burn of it against her cheek.

Fear caught at her throat, snagging her breath. It was sudden, visceral, the fear of the trapped or the hunted, death but a step away. For one terrifying moment she felt the heat and the darkness close in about her, smothering her, and then the sensation faded and she was left feeling hollow and empty.

She looked up and saw that Mark was watching her. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘You look as though you’re going to faint.’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Holly said but she was cold and shaking a little, and Mark’s hand closed over hers.

‘Holly?’

‘Sorry. I should have had breakfast.’ She freed herself and wrapped her fingers about the mug of tea, greedily seeking its warmth. She wasn’t sure what had happened in those few moments. It felt oddly as though time and space had shifted
around her and yet nothing had changed. The air in the old offices was dusty and still. Bonnie snored under the table.

‘Fire was so dangerous in those days when there weren’t adequate means to put it out,’ she said. ‘It must have been horrific.’

‘The river had been running low that year because it had been a dry winter,’ Mark said. ‘There was a bucket chain manned by servants but strong westerly winds fanned the flames into a wall of fire. I imagine it was terrifying. I’m surprised more people weren’t killed.’

Holly looked up sharply, feeling the cold bite into her bones again.

‘What do you mean,
more
people?’ she said. ‘Did someone die?’

Mark nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. The library caught fire early on and burned hotter than an inferno, according to eyewitnesses. Lord Evershot was in there. They couldn’t get him out in time and he burned to death.’

Fire
,
Holly thought. The crystal mirror.

Lavinia had not mentioned the mirror in her memoir, at least not yet, even though it had also originally been part of the treasure of the Order of the Rosy Cross. Espen Shurmer had said that the mirror had been lost for centuries, supposedly buried with Frederick, whose tomb was never found. Yet Holly had the strongest sensation that the mirror had been at Ashdown Park and that on that fateful night when the house had burned it had been at the heart of the inferno.