The Last Daughter

by Nicola Cornick

  ‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘You remembered! Are you all right, sweetie? How do you feel?’

  ‘I’m OK actually,’ Serena said, touched that Lizzie’s first thought should have been for her well-being. ‘I’m exhausted but I feel… lighter, somehow. It’s hard to explain. I guess I might run through a whole range of emotions in time, but for now it feels such a relief simply to remember.’

  ‘Well, please be careful.’ Lizzie sounded anxious. ‘Whoever killed Caitlin isn’t going to be happy that someone is digging into all of this again and they’ll be even less so if they hear you witnessed her disappearance.’

  Serena resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. She didn’t want to get paranoid. ‘We still don’t know for sure that Caitlin was killed,’ she said. ‘And I could have misremembered. Inspector Litton thinks a lot of it could have been distorted by time and trauma. And I suppose she may be right. It was all a long time ago.’

  ‘All the same,’ Lizzie said, ‘just take care, OK? When is Polly arriving?’

  ‘I’m picking her up at the station at midday and we’re going to see Grandpa,’ Serena said. ‘Jack and I are meeting up now for a coffee.’

  ‘Good,’ Lizzie said. ‘I feel as though you need to be under constant surveillance until this is all over.’

  ‘That could prove awkward,’ Serena said dryly.

  She could see Jack in front of the Ashmolean Museum, the collar of his coat turned up against the breeze. He was reading something and had on a pair of ridiculously attractive dark-rimmed glasses that made him look both intellectual and sexy at the same time. Serena was smiling when she joined him.

  ‘Hi.’ He shoved the book in his pocket and caught her hands, giving her a searching look. ‘I got your text. Are you OK?’

  ‘I’ll probably fall asleep if I don’t get coffee soon,’ Serena said, ‘but I’m OK.’

  Jack nodded and tucked her hand through his arm. ‘There’s a place just up here that’s really cosy.’ He gestured to a small café further up the road whose lamplit windows beckoned them in like something out of a fairy tale. ‘Here we are.’

  They settled in a corner upstairs, amidst dusty bookshelves, old church pews and farmhouse kitchen tables. It was still early and there were only a handful of other people there.

  ‘It’s atmospheric here,’ Serena said, taking in the sloping floorboards and sagging beams. ‘Eclectic, nice. I’ll get the coffee.’

  When she came back upstairs with two cappuccinos and an assortment of homemade cakes, Jack had already spread out some papers and a couple of books across the table.

  ‘Do you want to talk?’ he asked. ‘About the police interview, I mean?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it later,’ Serena said, stifling a yawn. ‘To be honest, I’d rather know whether you found a copy of The Lovell Lodestar. I’m ridiculously curious about it.’

  Jack laughed. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. He stuck his hand in the pocket of his coat and pulled out the book she’d seen him reading in the street. ‘Here it is.’

  ‘You found a copy!’ Serena stared at him. ‘Did they have it in the records office? Did they let you borrow it?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘I’ve got a mate who works in an antiquarian bookshop here in Oxford. I rang him last night to ask if he had a copy or knew where to track one down.’

  ‘Wow.’ Serena picked it up reverently, smoothing the plain blue cover. It was worn and faded, and when she opened the book, she saw the print was almost gone.

  ‘It’s very rare, apparently,’ Jack said. ‘It was a private printing, only a dozen of them made back in the mid-nineteenth century. The author was a local amateur historian called Oliver Fiske. He wrote a lot about the Windrush Valley and collected all the myths and legends of the area.’ He gestured to the other books and the sheaf of papers. ‘This is all stuff I’ve managed to gather together about his work. I thought it might be useful in some way, though I’m not sure how.’ He cocked his head. ‘You said you thought your grandfather had a copy. Do you want to tell me why it’s so important to you?’

  Serena nodded. ‘Grandpa mentioned the lodestar to me,’ she said. ‘It was when I told him that Caitlin’s body had been found. His precise words were, “It was the lodestar,” and then he said he should have told us where we had come from, how he should have warned us in some way.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what he meant and as you know, it’s hard to understand what he’s trying to say, or even to know if he understands himself. It felt odd, though, as though he was connecting something called the lodestar with our family history.’

  She picked up the book. ‘That night I saw a copy of this – The Lovell Lodestar – on the shelf in the pub. I think it was Grandpa’s own copy because I half-recognised it and it was tucked away with some other books that had come from the manor. I meant to read it but then Eve came along and asked me what I was doing and’ – she shrugged – ‘well, she seemed so curious I didn’t want to tell her about it. So I went back to look for the book later and it had gone.’ She leaned forward. ‘The most bizarre thing was that the next morning, the book was on the fire and I’m almost certain Eve had done it deliberately.’

  ‘Why on earth would she do that?’ Jack said. He was frowning. ‘I know she’s a bit odd and extremely nosy, but that’s very strange.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ Serena said, with feeling. She ran her finger along the black lettering on the book’s spine. ‘I must say I’m curious,’ she said. ‘What on earth can be in here?’

  ‘Well,’ Jack said, ‘we can find out.’ He took a mouthful of coffee. ‘I’ve done a bit of preliminary research but I haven’t had a good look at the book yet. According to the legends, though, the lodestar was a holy relic. When the church of St Kenelm was established in Minster Lovell, the monks brought a treasure belonging to the saint for pilgrims to venerate. It was kept in a gold-and-jewelled box and was immensely precious.’

  ‘A relic,’ Serena said. ‘You mean like a bone from St Kenelm’s body, or something like that? That’s… extraordinary.’ She drained her coffee. The hit of caffeine cleared the fuzziness in her head a little. She definitely needed more.

  ‘In the case of St Kenelm it wasn’t as grisly as that,’ Jack said with a smile. ‘Apparently the lodestar was a compass. Not the sort you or I would recognise,’ he added, ‘but something rather more basic – a flat plate, a pin and a needle of some sort. The earliest compasses were considered to possess magical powers because they contained lodestones which attracted iron, and pointed due north.’ He tapped one of the other books on the table. ‘There’s a historical encyclopaedia of mining here,’ he said, ‘in case you wanted to read up on lodestones and their properties.’

  ‘I’ll save that for the next time I have insomnia, thanks,’ Serena said dryly. ‘Just give me the top line on it.’

  Jack grinned self-deprecatingly. ‘I’m no scientist,’ he said, ‘but my understanding is that a lodestone is a rock that’s made of magnetite. Lodestones align themselves naturally with the earth’s magnetic field, hence their use in compasses. Oh, and the Pole Star was often known as the lodestar because, of course, it points to the north and has been used for navigation for millennia.’

  ‘With a name like lodestar you’d expect it to be a jewel,’ Serena said.

  ‘Well, it could be both practical and decorative,’ Jack said. He dipped his head. ‘The Ashmolean – just down the road – has a lodestone adorned with a gilt coronet that was donated in the eighteenth century, and apparently Sir Isaac Newton’s signet ring contained a lodestone too. They sound pretty cool. You can imagine why people might think they were magic.’

  He nodded towards her empty coffee cup. ‘Do you need another of those whilst we talk this over? It might help the thought processes.’

  He headed down the stairs and Serena reached for the book again and turned the fragile pages carefully. There wasn’t much text and a few hand-drawn illustrations: one was of the church, another of Minster Lov
ell Hall before it was ruined, looking exactly like in her grandfather’s painting, with the tower and the water gate still standing. She turned another page, skipping over Oliver Fiske’s description of the legend of St Kenelm, and came across another picture. She almost dropped the book.

  ‘What is it?’ Jack had come back, a cup of coffee in each hand. He put them down carefully. ‘You look as though you’ve seen another ghost,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s certainly a blast from the past,’ Serena said a bit shakily. ‘Look.’ She pushed the book across to him, pointing to the drawing. ‘This is what Fiske says the lodestar looked like – that’s based on hearsay. He admits no one in living memory had ever seen it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack said. ‘A plate, a pin and a needle is what he described but that… Is it an arrowhead?’

  ‘I think it is,’ Serena said. ‘Jack’ – she looked at him – ‘my grandfather had this… compass… on a shelf in his study at the manor when Caitlin and I were kids. I remember seeing it there.’

  Jack sat down abruptly. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘My God, I mean…’ He ruffled a hand through his hair. ‘Did he know what it was? Did he ever say anything about it?’

  Serena shook her head. ‘He kept it way out of reach. But I noticed it because it was such an odd-looking thing and sometimes the arrow would spin around on its own.’ She reached for the coffee. ‘How bizarre,’ she said softly. ‘I always wondered what it was and why he kept it. One day I tried to climb up to reach it and he caught me and I got a good telling off.’ She met Jack’s eyes. ‘He must have known what it was,’ she said slowly, ‘because he spoke of it only two days ago.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Do you know where it is now? Does he still have it?’

  Serena spread her hands. ‘I’ve no idea. The only thing I know is that he seemed to think it was connected with Caitlin’s disappearance – and our family history.’

  Jack put his cup down gently. ‘It says in the book that it was when the first Minster church was demolished and a new one built in the thirteenth century that the Lovell family became the protectors of the treasure. That was because a number of people had attempted to take the treasure from the church and it was not considered secure there. Perhaps it was passed on from the Lovell family to yours for safekeeping? Or perhaps they stole it.’ He handed a copy of one of the loose pages over to her. ‘I copied this today,’ he said. ‘It’s not in the lodestar book for some reason but in another work Fiske wrote. He listed the miracles performed by the relic when it was in St Kenelm’s church – various healing cures and so on – but he also recorded a couple of cases where someone tried to take the lodestar and it apparently fought back to protect itself. It’s something of a morality tale, I think – no doubt apocryphal but designed to reinforce Victorian values on the evils of theft and the punishment you deserve if you go to the bad.’

  ‘A young shepherd boy,’ Serena read, ‘thinking to make his fortune, took the relic from its place in the church and made off with it. He had gone no more than forty paces when it struck him down and he was left gibbering in madness.’ She looked up. ‘That’s pretty fierce.’

  ‘Read on,’ Jack said. ‘Allegedly it even had the power to make people disappear—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That was insensitive of me.’ He started to gather all the papers together. ‘I’m sorry, Serena,’ he said. ‘I should have thought of the parallels with Caitlin.’

  ‘No,’ Serena said shakily. ‘That’s OK. This is exactly why I needed to know.’

  She saw puzzlement in Jack’s eyes. She could feel her heart racing, so loud it seemed to echo in her ears. Her hands were trembling too; the piece of paper shivered in her grip as she read aloud from Oliver Fiske’s commentary:

  ‘One man even described what he had witnessed when the thief took the lodestar:

  ‘“There was a flash of light, brighter than the brightest lightning I had ever seen, and with it a sound harsher than the loudest thunder. The whole sky was alive. The man vanished from before my very eyes as though he had been plucked by an unseen hand, and the light grew until I had to shade my eyes for fear of being blinded…”’

  Serena put down the paper and it sank silently onto the pile on the table. There was no sound in the coffee shop but the muted conversation of the other customers, the clink of china and cutlery from downstairs and the faint hum of the traffic on St Giles outside. She looked up and met Jack’s gaze.

  ‘He’s just described my exact experience when I witnessed Caitlin disappear,’ she said.

  Chapter 20

  Anne

  Stoke Bardolph, June 1487

  Bosworth Field was not the end.

  Francis was an attainted traitor. For two years Henry Tudor’s men hunted him at home and abroad, whilst he took the role that had been the Tudors’ before, and fomented conspiracy and rebellion, working to put the House of York back on the throne. They were hard years for me and for the young Prince Richard. I went back to Ravensworth where my mother – still the indomitable Neville matriarch – governed now in the minority of her grandson. I kept quiet and I kept Richard hidden whilst Franke went about seeking news of Francis, providing tiny scraps of hope to keep me fed: letters, messages, sparse but the promise that kept me going.

  Men believed Richard to be dead. In the swirl of rumour and counter-rumour after the battle, knowledge of him was lost. Only his mother Elizabeth Woodville and I knew the truth – and Francis, of course. I knew not how any one of us could survive or build a life into the future unless the Yorkists retook the throne, and even then, I had fears that Richard, illegitimate or not, would always be seen as a threat. We took each day step by step, walking with the lightest tread so as not to give ourselves away.

  Then Franke came back one day with the news that there was to be a rebellion, sponsored by Margaret of Burgundy, a rising against the Tudors by the remnants of the House of York. And so we came to Stoke Field, and to the last battle.

  I had been in hiding since first light, concealed by the graceful fall of the willows that lined the river and dipped their branches low over the edge of the bank. The Trent ran shallow here, swirling over pebbles where the speckled fish darted and gleamed. The sun had crept around behind me and the light on the water almost blinded me. It was such a beautiful day to be alive.

  It was certainly too beautiful a day to die.

  I had been awake all night, waiting for the moment the first call of the blackbird pierced the darkness, schooling myself to stillness whilst my heart pounded so loud in my ears that I could barely hear the rustle of a mouse or the call of the owl out over the fields. When I slid from my bed of straw in the barn at the ruined manor that had once belonged to Francis’ grandmother, I was stiff with tension and fear, walking like a broken puppet until my limbs eased a little. I left Richard asleep in the charge of Franke; they were safe here at Stoke Bardolph, or as safe as they could ever be, and Franke would guard Richard with his life, just as I would. I knew Richard would be angry with me for leaving him behind for he was almost fourteen now and fretting to be a part of this battle. I’d told him the time would come soon enough and for now he must wait. He had enormous patience for a child, that boy, learned in a hard school over the years. I loved him so dearly and he me; it was that bond that made him do as I bid him even though he chafed against it.

  It was too dangerous to take the road. There were soldiers everywhere, rebels and king’s men, so I slid like a ghost along hedgerow and tree line, following the curve and fall of the land down to the Trent. I saw only one man, a deserter crashing through the undergrowth, eyes wild as a hunted doe, running from the ghost of his own fear when the battle had barely started.

  Francis had told us to wait for him at the manor but I could never do what I was told. At times, though, during that long day I wished I had. I had never been anywhere near a battlefield before. The hot heavy air carried the sounds to me, the jarring scrape of metal on metal and the cries of men: anger, fear, pain. I wan
ted to put my hands over my ears to blot it out but I dared not – for in the quiet only lay further danger. I had to stay alert. I hoped. I prayed. I needed to be here, not only because of a desperate need to see Francis again, at last, but also to know what I needed to do to protect Richard. I could not simply hide, deaf and blind to danger. I touched the lodestar at my throat. It would be my last bastion, my last chance.

  We have been fighting for as long as I have been alive, I thought. Let this be an end.

  The sun on the river dazzled me even as the sounds of slaughter made me feel sick. The air quivered with the weight of death, so close, breathing down my neck. The perspiration ran down my back, hot and cold, and the sun beat on my closed eyelids as though by shutting it out I could pretend none of this was happening, no more death, no more killing. The noise was intolerable. I wanted to run yet I had to bear it.

  Perhaps I dozed as the hours spun out, for I awoke with a violent start; a moorhen paddled away from the bank with much splashing, its movements jerky with terror. My heart raced. Someone – or something – was coming. I could see the ripples on the water. At some point whilst I slept, the sounds of the battle had ceased.

  The ripple grew to a wake, lapping at the shore. I moved, stiff again from the hours of waiting, tiptoeing down to the edge of the river and pushing aside the willow curtain to look out. When Francis had told me that he planned to swim the river if he needed to escape, I had thought him a mad fool. Yet here he was.

  He hauled himself onto the bank and I was beside him in a moment, a shoulder beneath his armpit as he struggled to pull free of the water. He had discarded his helmet but nothing else; his fair hair was plastered to his head, the water running in dazzling rivulets down his battered armour. Only the silver wolf, the blazon of Lovell, seemed to have escaped the blows.

  ‘I told you to wait at the manor.’ He lay prone beneath the willows, panting for breath, scowling at me.