The Last Daughter

by Nicola Cornick

  Early in the spring I travelled south to my new home. Francis’ presence on the journey distracted me from the heartache of leaving all that was familiar and my own natural curiosity did the rest. Everything was new, and fresh and exciting. As for Minster Lovell, I loved it on sight.

  I will be happy here, I thought and there was no shadow cast over my mind when I thought it, no hint of the secrets that Minster Lovell held.

  The Hall was quite new. Francis’ grandfather had rebuilt it a mere forty years before and it was spacious and comfortable. Despite that, Francis was determined to put his own stamp on it and planned a tower to the south-west, close by the river, where we might have a new range of apartments. He showed me the plans he had had drawn up. I wondered whether it was the need to distance himself from his father’s time that prompted him to create a new place where we might live. The old one was full of memories and for Francis, I knew, those had not been happy.

  In the meantime, however, we shared the manor with the ghosts of his past, the high vaulted hall and the beautiful solar, and of course, the bedchambers with a view to the west across the little river and the fields beyond. In addition to Minster Lovell I was also mistress of a vast number of other properties, including Wardour Castle in Wiltshire and Acton Burnell away to the west on the borders of Wales. Francis promised to take me to visit them all.

  It was scarcely surprising that in the whirl of my new life I forgot all about the treasure that Ginevra had entrusted to me to return. The story of the Mistletoe Bride and that evening at the Duke of Gloucester’s wedding years before had slipped from my mind like a shadow, a fairy tale that belonged to my childhood. Now I was, of course, grown up. I did not even remember the strangely shaped arrow until the day when one of the maids was unpacking my remaining trunks sent from Ravensworth and I saw her take out the plain wooden box that Crowther had made for me. She gave it only the scantest glance before discarding it and as she put it aside, it opened and the little stone arrowhead fell out. She gave an exclamation, picked it up, and was, I thought, about to throw it on the fire.

  ‘What are you doing?’ My words were sharper than I had intended and immediately she dropped the arrow and turned a deep unbecoming shade of red. I thought she was going to cry. She had already torn one of my underskirts in her clumsy sorting and I had reprimanded her. No doubt she thought I might dismiss her now.

  ‘My lady…’ she stuttered. ‘I thought it nothing, a piece of coal…’

  ‘No matter.’ I retrieved the arrow and gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. I was learning that people hung on my every word as the mistress of the house. It was a new sensation for at Ravensworth I had been known since childhood, and indulged, but I had not had the same authority as I did here.

  ‘No harm is done,’ I said. ‘Only this little treasure is special to me. It was a gift.’

  She looked uncertain, as though I might be half-mad for treasuring a small lump of arrow-shaped rock.

  ‘Run along and ask the boy to bring in more wood for the fire,’ I said on a sigh. ‘I will finish the work here.’

  After she had gone, I sat down by the window with the little stone arrowhead in my hand. It was not dull black as I remembered it, but smooth and shiny from contact with the velvet of the box. It felt cold to the touch but warmed in my palm. It looked exactly like what she had believed it to be, no more than a lump of rock, crudely fashioned into that pointed shape. Seeing it through a stranger’s eyes, doubts formed in my mind that the stories Ginevra had told me were no more than fantasies made up to amuse a bored child. Even so, I set it back in its box and put it at the bottom of a chest amongst my best clothes, and I determined to discover if there was any truth in the old tales.

  ‘What do you know of the Lovell lodestar?’ I asked Francis one night as we lay together in our bed, drowsy in the aftermath of loving. ‘Is it true that there was once a sacred jewel that was lost?’

  Francis raised himself onto one elbow and looked at me with amusement.

  ‘Who has been telling you those old tales?’ he asked. ‘They are no more than legends.’

  I wasn’t prepared to give up so easily. ‘I heard that the Lovell family held a precious treasure entrusted to them centuries ago,’ I said. ‘And that it was said to possess enchantment beyond man’s wildest imaginings.’

  Francis drew my head back down on his shoulder and started to play idly with my hair, winding it about his fingers before letting it spring loose again.

  ‘It is true that there was a Minster church here back in the time of the old Saxon kings,’ he said, ‘and that some of the manuscripts and documents were placed in our family’s care for safekeeping. They are still here in the muniments room. If you would like to see them, I will ask Fiske to show you.’ Fiske was his clerk, a man as dry and dusty as the documents in his care. An hour spent poring over Latin in his company was not a pastime I relished but perhaps I would need to do so if I wanted a clue to the powers of the lodestar. I thought of the little rock in its velvet box and felt again that sense of disbelief. Had I been taken for a fool? Had Ginevra’s story really been no more than a fantasy? Yet Crowther had called my rock a ‘lodestone’ so surely the two – lodestone and lodestar – must be one and the same.

  ‘But what of the treasure?’ I persisted. ‘You said it was a legend, but perhaps there was some truth in it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Francis said. He yawned. ‘There are many tales of treasures and the like. There may be a grain of truth in them to begin with but over time they become so embroidered that they are as much a fiction as the stories the travelling players tell. The time of the Saxon kings was over five hundred years ago, Anne. Nothing but a few old scrolls remain. But as I say, Fiske can show you.’

  I sighed, relaxing back into his arms as he started to kiss me. Francis was no scholar, neither was he in the least a superstitious man. Even if there was truth in the stories, he would have paid no heed to them. I resolved instead to ask the priest. Despite their calling, or perhaps because of it, I had often found men of the church to be most knowledgeable on matters of myth and legend. They were educated and well read. If anyone would know of the Saxon kings’ treasure, it would be the village rector.

  Meanwhile I was easily distracted by the touch of Francis’ hands on my bare skin and the press of his body against mine. Looking at him, at his face so grave in the firelight and the desire in his eyes, I felt such a surge of love for him and I raised my hand to cup his cheek. ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I hope it will always be this way between us.’

  ‘It will,’ he said. He smiled that rare smile of his. ‘Anne,’ he said. ‘My love, now and for ever.’

  I woke at some point during the night to find the fire burned out and the room lit only by the full moon outside. I slipped from the warmth of the bed and crossed the floor to the window. The night was mild although outside the sky was clear and studded with so many stars that shone as hard and bright as diamonds. I sat by the window and looked out across the manor and river beyond, painted in the silver and black of moonlight and shadow. There was the river, a rippling silver mantle beneath the moon, and the water gate and the dovecote edged sharp against the deep velvet blue of the sky.

  The April moon, the hare moon, as we called it at home in the North, was a pitiless white, so bright on the river that it dazzled me momentarily. In that instant I saw the picture before me shift and change, as though snow was falling, a blizzard of it that reshaped the scene before me and obliterated all familiarity. I saw a dark figure slip from a doorway into the courtyard and cross to the water gate. She looked cold and furtive, her steps hurried, her footprints erased from the snow as soon as they were made. The wind snatched at her cloak and the snow swirled around her in a fury. I saw her pause as she reached the shelter of the wall and she turned back, looking directly up at my window.

  She had Ginevra’s face.

  ‘Anne, come back to bed,’ Francis called to me. He sounded drowsy. I looked over toward hi
m and when I turned back to the window the vision had gone and the river was still and pale again.

  ‘You’re cold,’ Francis said, as I slipped in beside him. ‘Let me warm you.’ And I curled up beside him as he drew me into his arms again.

  I spent a fruitless hour with Fiske, Francis’ clerk, who had quite clearly never read the old documents in the muniments room, probably because he always seemed extremely busy with all the current work to do with Francis’ various estates and complicated lawsuits. He was an earnest young man who wanted to please me, if only because I was Francis’ wife, but after we had both become very dusty and frustrated trying to read the faded script of endless land charters, we gave up.

  ‘I am not quite sure what it is you are looking for, my lady,’ he said helplessly, rubbing his dirty palms together and smearing the dust even further.

  I did not really know either. Naïvely I had hoped there might be a big old book that told the story of the lodestar, and that of the Mistletoe Bride for good measure. I would even have settled for a charter from King Alfred himself to the Minster church offering the lodestar to them for safekeeping and outlining its magical powers. Unsurprisingly there was no such document, or at least not that Mr Fiske and I could find.

  I was not giving up easily, though. Next, I asked the priest, catching him for a moment on his own after Mass one Sunday. This was difficult for I was so seldom alone – if Francis did not want my company then there were a dozen other people clamouring for it, or some household matter or other to attend to. Sundays were particularly difficult because of the parade of neighbours and acquaintances at church; however, I cornered Father Bernard beside a Lovell tomb and asked to speak with him. His gaze flickered to my stomach, as though he was expecting me to announce the imminent arrival of a Lovell heir, and to ask him to pray for me.

  ‘Do you know of an old treasure lodged here from the days before the Conquest, Father Bernard?’ I asked. ‘Maybe it was a relic? It is said to possess miraculous powers.’

  Father Bernard’s eyes bulged. ‘Indeed not, my lady,’ he said, his pebbled spectacles flashing nervously in the light. ‘I know of no such legend. A relic, you say? Miracles?’ He rubbed his palms down his cassock. ‘There are no miracles here.’

  That I could well believe with such a staid fellow in charge.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I persisted. ‘I met a woman once who told me of a holy treasure that possessed extraordinary powers. It was called the Lovell lodestar.’

  Father Bernard looked as though he wanted to cast the devils out of me. ‘That sounds like pagan wickedness to me, Lady Lovell,’ he said. ‘’Twould be best to forget all about it.’ And he scurried away, muttering about enchantments.

  ‘You have been asking all the wrong people,’ Frideswide said when she came to stay with us a couple of weeks later and she and I were sitting together in the solar, alone for once, whilst Francis and Fiske worked long into the night over the latest of his claims for his lands and manors. I had confided in her that since coming to Minster Lovell, I had heard many fascinating tales of a lost treasure and also of a Mistletoe Bride, married to one of her ancestors. Instead of telling me that my wits were begging or that I was meddling in witchcraft, she nodded.

  ‘I heard those stories, too, when I was a child,’ she said.

  This made me laugh for she was no more than fourteen years now. ‘What did you mean by “the wrong people”?’ I asked. ‘How have I erred?’

  ‘They are all men,’ Frideswide said simply. ‘Oh’ – she waved one slender hand to clarify her words – ‘I do not mean that men cannot be storytellers – the minstrels with their tales of love and chivalry prove it can be so – but men like Francis who are soldiers, and men like Fiske’ – she wrinkled up her nose, clearly having no great opinion of the clerk – ‘who is an administrator… And the priest—’ Her tone was full of disdain. ‘It is not that they do not countenance such stories, it is that they do not even hear them. They consider themselves above such fantasies. They are tales whispered as lullabies to children, or as ghost stories on a winter night.’

  ‘So how did you hear of it then?’ I asked. I set aside the piece of embroidery I had been pretending to work, and curled up on the settle. Frideswide sat on the floor at my feet, resting against one of the new cushions I had purchased for the room. I was pleased with my decorations, the rich reds and bright golds of the tapestries and cushions that lifted the grey stone of the walls and made the place seem warmer and lighter. I hoped that it might chase away some of the shadows that Francis and his sisters had experienced here.

  ‘My nurse,’ Frideswide said, drawing her knees up to her chin, ‘told me the story of the Mistletoe Bride. It is well known in the village. There was a woman who married one of my ancestors, John Lovell, but at the wedding feast, during a game of hide and seek, she disappeared. They searched high and low for her, but she had vanished. John pined for her – but not a great deal, for he remarried and begot a family soon after. Then, years later, when they opened an old chest that had been left untouched in the muniments room, there she was, no more than a pile of bones in the rags of a wedding dress!’

  I shuddered. This was the alternative story that Ginevra had told me, the one she said had not been true.

  ‘Do you know when it was?’ I asked. ‘Who was the bride?’ One thing that I had seen when I had spent the hour with Mr Fiske looking for references to the lodestar had been the Lovell ancestry, all the way back to Eudes, Duke of Brittany in the tenth century and before. There had, I remembered, been a number of John Lovells on the family tree. Any one of them could have been the John Lovell in question – or none of them.

  Frideswide shrugged. ‘I have no notion of either the date or her name.’

  ‘Nor where she is buried?’

  ‘There is no grave for her,’ Frideswide said. Her grey Lovell eyes met mine. ‘I think it only a legend,’ she said judiciously. ‘A ghost story told to frighten small children.’

  ‘So perhaps it isn’t true,’ I said. ‘Perhaps…’ Perhaps John Lovell himself invented the whole tale of the dead bride in the chest to hide the truth that he had been robbed of his treasure by the bride thief. Perhaps he made it up so that he would not look like a fool and over time, men believed the falsehood, as they are wont to do.

  ‘Did your nurse also tell you about the lodestar?’ I asked. ‘The treasure that the Lovells had been given to guard as a sacred trust back in the days of the old Saxon kings?’

  Frideswide reached for some nuts which I had thoughtfully set in a bowl on the table beside her, having noted that she had the appetite of a growing girl.

  ‘The relic of St Kenelm,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

  I was so surprised that I sat up straight and almost fell off the settle. ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  One of the hunting dogs pushed open the door of the solar and came over to Frideswide, curling up beside her. They were supposed to be kept in the kennels by the stable but I liked having their company in the house. Frideswide petted its ears as she talked and the dog made a happy sound deep in its throat, rolling over to invite her to rub its stomach.

  ‘Did you never wonder why the church is dedicated to St Kenelm?’ Frideswide asked.

  ‘I cannot say that I did,’ I said. I knew it to be an unusual name but it had not aroused my curiosity beyond that. I thought I vaguely remembered the name from hearing The Canterbury Tales.

  ‘St Kenelm was a boy king,’ she said. ‘He ruled the old Saxon kingdom of Mercia. He was slain by his sister’s lover because she wanted to rule in his place but her plot was discovered and his body found and all manner of miracles took place in his name.’

  This was standard saintly fare and I wondered at it. Although I had been brought up to believe in holy miracles there were times when, secretly, I doubted the truth of these stories and thought that the Church simply made them up. Once, as a child, I had asked mother if miracles truly occurred and she had told me that the Church said they did and the
refore we must believe it. My curiosity, so often unwelcome, had been silenced on that topic ever since.

  ‘St Kenelm was buried at Winchcombe,’ Frideswide continued. Seeing my look of query she waved a hand vaguely. ‘It is not far from here, I believe, though I am not precisely sure where. The monks at the abbey there brought a relic of St Kenelm to the Minster church here so that pilgrims could venerate it.’

  ‘But what was it?’ I asked. ‘What form did it take?’

  Frideswide shook her head. ‘No one knew. No one ever saw it. It was kept in a casket of gold and precious stone, and it was said to possess miraculous power beyond man’s wildest imaginings.’

  There was quiet in the room but for the dog’s happy snoring.

  ‘What does that mean, I wonder,’ I said. Idly, I traced a pattern on the polished wood of the settle. ‘What are your wildest imaginings?’

  ‘Every man’s wildest imaginings are different,’ Frideswide said gravely. Then she giggled. ‘That is what my nurse told me. Some imagine fiery beasts that fly, others a power to cure all ills, or an invincible sword, or riches enough to rule the world.’ She stroked the dog’s warm flank. ‘I did hear tell that a simple youth stole it once, thinking it would make his fortune. They say it drove him mad, and he was found clutching it in his hand, raving of having travelled through time and seen monsters of iron.’ She looked at me. ‘I do not know the truth of any of this,’ she said simply, ‘but if the treasure existed then it was a relic, a holy object. It should never be used for evil gain.’

  I thought again of the story of the thief bride. She had only wanted to use the relic to purchase her freedom and that of her sister from a cruel master. Surely that had not been so bad. And yet she had suffered for it, like the simple youth whose story mirrored her own: