House of Shadows (35 page)

This time there was nothing patronising about PC Caldwell. She had obviously been trained in how to deal with shock and how to speak to bereaved relatives. Death was something firm, something definite that she had seen and
understood. It was not like missing persons where there was nothing to focus upon.

She sat at the kitchen table whilst Holly, clean and dry now but chilled to the core, lost count of the number of mugs of tea everyone put in front of her. PC Caldwell spoke softly about how sorry she was, how it seemed that the recent rains had broken through the wooden panels that had separated the machine room below from the millstream outside. She talked about tunnels and water mines and how Ben must have fallen down a shaft elsewhere and his body had remained hidden until the recent weather had set the mill race running and washed him down to the pool. The words passed over Holly in a jumble of noise.

They had taken Ben’s body away and PC Caldwell had told her, trying to be kindly, no doubt, that there was not a scratch on him and they were sure it had been an accident, the chalk soil crumbling away beneath his feet on the path nearby so that he had fallen into the tunnels and been knocked unconscious and drowned in less than a foot of water.

‘Just like you almost were,’ Fran had said, shuddering, but Holly knew there was more to it than that. She had felt the evil that enveloped her. She had sensed the destructive power of the water and the Sistrin pearl. The gold chain sat on the table beside her now. No one had commented on it because it looked like a battered old relic you might have found – and ignored – at a car boot sale. But Holly had seen it around the neck of the Winter Queen in more than one portrait with the Sistrin in the centre. She did not know
where the pearl was now but she knew that Ben had had the chain with him when he had died.

The door of the mill opened and Mark came in. He came straight across to Holly and took her in his arms, holding her tight. His mouth was against her hair and his arms were close about her and Holly felt a helpless wash of love sweep through her.

‘Are you all right?’ Mark’s hands were hard on her shoulders as he held her away to look at her face. ‘Holly—’

‘I’m fine,’ Holly said, shaken as much by what she had seen in his eyes as what had happened. Mark opened his mouth to say something else but there was a step behind him, a flash of movement and Flick was there, her long fair hair hanging loose about her face in soaking strands, her expression pinched and scared.

‘Flick,’ Mark said sharply, ‘I told you to stay at home—’

‘I had to come,’ Flick said. She drew herself up, pale and defiant. ‘It’s time I told the truth.’ She turned to Holly. In the silence that followed Holly noticed all the little things; that the cuffs of Flick’s corduroy jacket were starting to fray, that her nails were painted but bitten down, that her slender fingers were shaking. She looked simultaneously older and much younger than her nineteen years, an adult and yet simultaneously a frightened child.

Suddenly Holly knew exactly what Flick was going to say, and she started to shake too.

‘Ben and I quarrelled on the night he died,’ Flick said. Holly saw her throat move as she swallowed convulsively. ‘I pushed a note under the door, asking him to meet me out on the path on the far side of the millpond.
I threatened to tell his wife about us if he refused to see me.’

Holly saw PC Caldwell’s jaw drop and she made a grab for her notebook.

‘You were having an affair with Ben?’ Holly’s words came out as a whisper.

‘I loved him,’ Flick said. ‘I was crazy about him. He told me all about his research, how he was looking for the Sistrin pearl, and about William Craven and Elizabeth Stuart and the diary he had found belonging to that girl who was here with her lover. He said they had been soul mates, destined to be together through time and that we were the same, special, bound together. But that night—’ Flick’s voice caught on a sob. ‘I wanted to go into the woods with him but he wouldn’t go beyond the pond so that he could still see the mill. He wanted to know Florence was safe. And I suddenly saw … I realised …’ She gulped. ‘It was all a sham. Just words to seduce me, you know? It was all empty, meaningless stuff to get me into bed. He was never going to leave Tasha or risk losing his child. I was so angry with him—’

‘Flick,’ Mark said, and there was clear warning in his voice. ‘Don’t say anything else.’

Flick’s head went up.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ she said clearly. ‘He tried to buy me off with that—’ She nodded towards the battered gold chain on the table. ‘Said it was special, that it had belonged to the Winter Queen. I just swore at him and shoved it back in his hand and then I ran away. And that was the last time I saw him.’

There was a silence. Even PC Caldwell was sitting, pencil poised, having written nothing in her notebook at all. Holly saw her give herself a little shake and reach for her radio, speaking in a low voice, calling for back-up. Fran was whiter than a ghost, her mug of tea tilting perilously, forgotten in her hand. She looked stricken and ill, and for once she had nothing to say.

Holly looked at Mark. His eyes met hers for a moment and she thought she saw the shadow of regret there, of apology.

Mark had known, she thought, and she felt a dull thud of betrayal and understanding. She could see all too clearly now why he had disliked Ben so intensely. He had known that Flick and Ben had been having an affair. He had not told her. In fact he had done a remarkable job of hiding both that knowledge and his feelings from her.

Holly got up and walked past him without a word, and went out into the dark.

London, May 1661

L
ondon looked so different. Elizabeth’s memories were golden girlish dreams full of pageantry and pleasure; the river had glittered in endless sunlight, the tables had groaned under the weight of the feasts and the fountains had run with rose water. She had left England in love and sunshine. She returned to it under the cover of darkness, her ship slipping up the river from Gravesend. She stood on the deck despite her ladies warning her of the pernicious danger of the sea air. Here and there along the bank a light showed, but most of London was shrouded in night.

Craven had sent a carriage for her, of course, and an entire fleet of smaller coaches to carry her luggage. She smiled at the ostentatious display. He, of all men, should know how very few possessions she had left. She was tired now though and the soft cushions were very welcome to her
aching bones. She had no urge to raise the blind and look out on London. She could hear the sounds of the city, so different from The Hague. They were familiar yet strange at the same time, poignant and yet exciting, stirring up the past, promising an unknown future. So many years had gone by, so much had changed, so many loved ones lost. Craven, though, was steadfast, unchanging. Her heart eased a little at the thought that he was waiting for her.

The carriage turned and at last she leaned forwards and lifted a corner of the blind to see a long straight avenue of elms and a wide set of gates, all illuminated by torchlight. As the carriage swung into a courtyard she had the strangest illusion of grandeur, all this for her, as though she were still honoured and revered rather than the last relic of a lost generation.

A sudden shower of hail rapped on the roof and she jumped at the noise. The door swung open to reveal the cobbled yard awash. Craven himself was waiting to help her down.

‘Majesty.’ His bow was exquisitely formal, his hand steady in hers when she, the veteran of so many more important occasions, suddenly trembled. ‘Welcome back to England.’

‘With weather such as this there can be no mistake,’ Elizabeth said. ‘November in May.’

A ripple of laughter ran through the phalanx of servants drawn up behind Craven who were already shivering and sodden. Elizabeth drew her hood up and allowed Craven solicitously to usher her across the yard and in at the door of the house. She had a confused impression of a wide expanse of brick, with high doorways and elegant carving.
The carpets were thick and silenced the steps. It felt warm and comfortable.

‘I will take you up to your chambers, Your Majesty.’ With a jerk of the head Craven indicated to the servants to fall back and leave the two of them. Elizabeth noted that not by a flicker of expression did any one of them show their surprise.

‘You have your servants well trained,’ she said, laying a hand on his arm as they ascended the stair side by side. ‘Either that, or …’

‘Or?’

‘Or they know.’

He sighed. ‘Elizabeth, everyone knows that we are wed. They have known it for years.’ There was an edge of steel beneath the smile in his voice. ‘All they wonder is why you refuse to acknowledge it.’

Here it was, and so soon. Years ago it had been she who had pressed for the marriage. Craven never ceased to remind her of that, remind her that he had been the one who had spoken of her queenly duty, of the gossip and scandal that would inevitably follow were she to wed a commoner. She had ridden roughshod over all his objections, so anxious had she been to keep him by her side. Yet she was the one who had seen fit to keep the marriage a secret for the past nineteen years.

Colour stung her face. All the warmth and comfort she had felt to see him faded. ‘We have spoken of this,’ she said. Her voice felt stiff. ‘You know that all I have left to me now is my royal status—’

‘Which would no longer be diminished were you to admit
to our marriage.’ He sounded weary, the same arguments rehearsed and rehashed into staleness down the years. Charles Louis had regained the Palatinate now and England had a restored monarchy. Craven saw her work as done.

She could not remember how long their first flush of passion had lasted but it had been wonderful, like rain falling on parched earth. Each time they had parted and come back together it had felt exciting, illicit, as though they really were still lovers rather than husband and wife. That passion had faded with time and age but much of the sweetness had remained. He still made her feel safe. She was still sure of his loyalty after all these years. She did not want to quarrel.

‘It pains me to hear that your status is all you value,’ he said.

His words flicked her on the raw. ‘It was not my intention to belittle what you mean to me,’ she said.

‘Yet you value your standing higher.’

Her head ached sharply. She wondered how it had come to this. She did not understand why he could not see her point. She wondered if it was sheer masculine pride that blinded him to the fact that she had a greater purpose to fulfil; that as a queen her place was on a grander stage than he could offer. She remembered the French ambassador’s words to her when she had left The Hague. He had told her that her role now was to secure affection for the whole of the royal family, for her nephew Charles, so newly come back into his kingdom, his grip on the throne still insecure. She had to charm those who did not yet know her and remind those who remembered her that she was still the Queen of Hearts.

When she did not reply, Craven said, a little dryly:

‘I think that you underestimate my popularity here in the capital. A public acknowledgment of our marriage might burnish your status rather than lessen it.’

She knew that there was some truth in that. He was a hero and their story was a romantic one. People were sentimental. Charles would give him titles and honours, perhaps even a dukedom. Yet at the end of it he would still be the son of a cloth merchant and she would still be too proud to wish to be reminded of that. It was strange how her mother’s barbs still stung after so many years. She could imagine Queen Anne standing here now, taunting her for her choices. When first she had married Frederick, Anne had mocked her for choosing a mere prince. Now her second husband was a man whose fortune was built on sheep.

The old slights still had the power to hurt. Ten years or more ago she had heard gossip at her court that Craven had paid her late brother fifty thousand pounds for her hand in marriage and she had been incensed to be spoken of as though she were some cheap bargaining chip in a loathsome deal made for men and arms. It had been the first time she had regretted their marriage and something had been broken that day that she could never get back.

Yet through war and bloodshed, the loss of brother, sons, more friends than she could care to count, all the seemingly endless trials that life had put her through, Craven had stood by her.

‘Let us not speak of this now,’ she said. ‘I am tired and it is late.’

She saw a grim little smile touch his lips and alongside
the tiredness felt almost a desperation that matters were so awry so soon. This was a homecoming. It should have been happy.

A servant was approaching down the stairs; there was no time or opportunity to talk even had she wanted to do so. Lack of privacy had always been a saving grace as well as a curse.

‘Of course, madam.’ Craven, the consummate courtier now, opened the door of a suite of rooms at the top of the stair. ‘These are your chambers. I trust that you will be very comfortable here.’

Materially, there could be no doubt about it. There were formal reception rooms with exquisite plasterwork, a boudoir hung in pale green velvet, dressing room and bedchamber, richly carpeted, the warmth of the fires blazing. Here there were no threadbare covers or battered furniture to mock her poverty. There was even a replica of the hunting tapestry from the palace at Rhenen, made new in vivid colours. For a moment she could not believe it and she felt the tears sting her throat.

‘Oh!’

‘Do you like it?’ Craven looked boyishly pleased with himself, all ill temper gone now. ‘I asked an artist fellow to sketch it and had the design made up here in London.’

Elizabeth ran her fingers over it, feeling the thickness of the weave, taking in the brightness of the colours. It was like looking back through a window onto a life that had gone. She was not sure if it made her feel happy or sad.

‘You are so kind.’ That at least she could say with all sincerity.

Her ladies were coming now. She could hear their voices upraised in pleasure as they marvelled over the luxury of their new accommodation.

‘You had better go,’ she whispered to him.

Once, she thought, he would have argued. He would have shot the bolt, taken her in his arms, made love to her. Now, with exquisite formality, he took her hand in his and kissed it like a courtier, and then he was gone.