A Baby's Bones

by Rebecca Alexander

  Felix Guichard

  University of Exeter

  Sage typed his name into a search engine and a stack of hits came up, mostly relating to his work with the World Health Organization, as Yousuf had mentioned, but one result stood out: ‘Professor publishes sorcery manuscripts!’ It was from a tabloid newspaper, a pretty lurid piece, detailing Guichard’s work on symbols that were supposed to be involved in magic, not just from the past but from the recent inquest into the death of a teenage girl. A photograph showed him to be a tall man, tanned and relaxed-looking.

  Sage sent Guichard an email confirming she’d make an appointment. When she looked up, Marcus had gone. She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or hurt, but either way it was painful.

  * * *

  Leaving the ferry had its own rhythm too. Again, the blast of sea air, the smell of seaweed growing off the dock, the slap of waves against the fishing boats moored alongside. Sage climbed into her car and waited to be beckoned forward, to bounce up the ramp onto the road. The familiar route through Portsmouth led to the A3, and off to her parents’ house in Petersfield.

  Her mother met her at the door, the dogs barking and bouncing, and Sage couldn’t get a sentence out until they had been patted, shoved in the dining room and commanded to go in their baskets. It wouldn’t last, they would slink out again, but at least they would be quiet for a few minutes.

  Yana put the kettle on and leaned against the table looking at her daughter. They were a similar height, Yana more rangy although heavier in the hips, but their features were very similar. ‘Straight off the Steppe,’ Dad would say.

  ‘You look thin,’ Yana announced, her accent more pronounced than with strangers. ‘Are you eating enough? For baby?’

  ‘I’ve been really busy.’ Sage looked around the room, seeing a few spaces in the familiar clutter. ‘You’ve had a clear-out.’

  ‘It was time. Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  Sage smiled. ‘Decluttering?’

  ‘We’re selling the house.’

  Sage’s smile froze on her face. ‘What? But you’ve been here nearly twenty years. I thought you both love this place.’

  Yana pushed open the back door, which led into a large conservatory. ‘I do. But some things have changed.’ She carried a tray with teapot, strainer, spoons and mugs on it into the conservatory and put it down on a low table next to a sofa and armchair.

  ‘What?’ Sage could hear her own voice had squeaked up. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Your father and I have decided to separate. Divorce, sell house.’

  ‘Dad?’ Sage sat down on the wicker sofa, feeling it creak under her. ‘Why? What happened?’

  Yana shrugged. She turned her head towards the garden, and Sage saw that there were dark shadows under her eyes, new lines on her forehead, and her dark hair was growing longer than she would normally let it.

  ‘Mum? Sheshe?’

  Her mother turned to Sage and held out her hand. Taking it, Sage could see the stains in the creases of her mother’s palm and fingers. She must have been making tinctures, herbal medicines for her practice.

  ‘Your father has met someone else. You mustn’t be cross.’

  Sage struggled to find the words. ‘I thought you were happy.’

  ‘It isn’t his fault. Really.’ Yana let go of Sage’s hand and settled into the armchair. ‘So I am selling house, and buying something smaller. Is only fair.’

  ‘He’s been cheating on you—’

  ‘Well, we can’t judge him for that, can we?’ Yana looked meaningfully at Sage. ‘Neither of us are innocent in that respect, are we?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Yana smiled, as she stirred the contents of the teapot. ‘Well, your man is married, isn’t he? Why else would you not move in together? Why else would I have never met him?’ The spoon clinked musically.

  Sage could feel a blush building in her face, and for one horrible moment, felt a wave of shame. ‘That’s all over. He’s staying with his wife and he doesn’t want the baby. But I can’t believe Dad is like that.’

  ‘He had one affair. I had several. Your father was patient and forgiving, but then he met someone who really understood him.’

  Sage could hardly breathe. ‘You had affairs? When?’

  Yana leaned over and patted her hand. ‘A long time ago. I love your father, of course I do – who could not? But the truth is…’ She paused for a long time, as if trying to find the right words. ‘I fall in love with women, Sage. We weren’t free to think like modern women back then. We were told to fall in love with nice boy, get married, have children. But I never felt with David—’

  Sage rubbed her forehead. ‘I can’t believe this. You fell in love with women, plural, and Dad just put up with it?’

  Yana nodded. ‘I tried to keep it secret, but he’s my best friend and he could always see. I think it broke his heart each time – I know it did mine. So when he met Karen, I couldn’t stand in his way. She is good woman, kind woman. You will like her.’

  Sage slumped into the old cushions, releasing the musty smell they had accumulated over the winter. ‘So my mother’s a lesbian and my dad’s shacked up with someone else.’

  Yana smiled at her. ‘And my daughter’s a pregnant ex-mistress. Grown-up life, yes?’

  Sage managed a pained smile of her own. ‘Please tell me Rosie’s still happily married.’

  Yana chuckled. ‘Your sister has her own dramas. Work, children, husband – she imagines she’s living in a soap opera.’

  Sage studied her hands for a moment. They were big hands, like her mother’s, worker’s hands, Yana had always called them. The soil had stained the creases of her palms, like her mother’s. ‘So, you’ll be on your own.’

  ‘Like you. And with a baby coming in the summer, and no man.’

  ‘I’m OK, plenty of women bring up children alone.’ Something bubbled to the surface before Sage could stop it. ‘Actually, I met a nice guy this week.’

  ‘Oh?’ Yana poured out the herbal tea through the strainer. ‘Come on, now, you need a tonic.’

  ‘Oh, Mum!’

  ‘It would be terrible if the herbalist’s daughter got anaemia, and ended up having a caesarean, wouldn’t it?’ She dropped a slice of lemon in the reddish brew. ‘Tell me about this “nice guy”.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean—’ Sage sipped the tea, grimaced, and added a spoonful of sugar. ‘We’re just working together. He’s the vicar of Banstock. The people who own the cottage where I’m working are going through a lot, and I’m keeping an eye on them. We found some bones in the old well, some of them from a baby. The vicar’s been able to give me some information on the history of the village.’

  ‘Well, vicars do hear all the gossip.’ Yana stroked one of the dogs, who had ambled in and slumped its head onto her lap. ‘Is he single? This man?’

  ‘Mum!’ Sage took a bigger gulp of the brew, which wasn’t so bad now. ‘Actually, he’s widowed.’

  Yana smiled. ‘At least single, yes?’

  ‘He was just nice, friendly. He told me about this legend of a witch called Isabeau, back in Tudor times.’

  ‘It was so easy to call a woman “witch” in those days, huh?’ Yana crossed her ankles. ‘She was probably sleeping with someone else’s husband. Maybe wife.’ She laughed.

  ‘And she was French.’

  Yana spread out her hands. ‘There you are. Probably a wise woman who knew all about herbs, and a foreigner as well. Burn her, she must be witch.’

  Sage smiled wryly, and finished the tea. The baby wriggled, and she rubbed her tummy. Yana stood up from her chair to kneel beside her daughter. She rested both hands over Sage’s belly, the warmth in her palms spreading through her. When the baby kicked again, Yana’s face broadened into a huge grin. ‘Ah, bobek!’

  Tears filled Sage’s eyes as she saw the strong hands holding the baby, and herself. ‘Sheshe, it’s sad. The baby in the well – I can’t help thinking
about it.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ Yana leaned over, lifted her hands to cup her daughter’s face, and kissed her cheeks. ‘You are a mother now, yes? You will always care more. But it isn’t your baby in the well. Yours is warm and safe. And in June, I will hold her, yes?’

  ‘Or him.’ Sage smiled, and wiped the dampness from her eyes.

  12

  6th August 1580

  Lavender from France and sweet flowers for bedchambers, to Master John the Apothecary six shillings

  Accounts of Banstock Manor, 1576–1582

  It is a sad day and a merry day together, when Viola and I visit the church to remember her mother. Lord Anthonie used to join us for prayers for her soul, and her rest in heaven, but since his remarriage it is just we two. After the service, we sit together by the tomb in which her mortal remains lie, reading the sharply engraved words.

  ‘Lady Marion Banstock, died in her twenty-ninth year, beloved wife of Anthonie, Lord Banstock, 1566.’ Viola traces the ornaments along the edge of the stone. ‘She had so much life in those years. Marriage, seven children and death, all before she was thirty.’ She twists the woven posy of lavender stalks between her fingers, releasing the scent. ‘And she died giving birth to me.’ The child contemplates her own journey.

  ‘Indeed.’ This day of all days, my mind runs on Lady Marion, the first wife of Lord Banstock, as I first beheld her. She was being lifted down from her horse by a groom, and I, a simple clerk to the old steward, was fresh from university. She was dressed for travelling, her face pink with the heat, her copper hair creeping from under her hood. She looked around and her eyes met mine. My heart was taken in one glance, and it was only when my brother stepped forward to take her hand and welcome her that the true story was revealed. I believe still that in that one moment she too beheld a mate, but we were never to speak of it.

  I read the other stones to Viola, as she has asked me to do since she was a small child. She starts with the effigy of her grandfather.

  ‘Lord Anthonie, second baron, child.’

  ‘He has a stern face.’ Indeed, the old lord, my father, was remembered on his tomb as a knight, with a dog crouched at his feet in old tradition. His face was as harsh in real life.

  ‘He was a strong man,’ I say, as a compromise. ‘Fair.’

  ‘He came, and took you from your mother to place you in a school.’

  ‘He did.’ I had no warning that at the tender age of ten my father, whom I had never met but who sent money to us each quarter day, would wrench me from my home. My mother died that winter, from plague, and I spent every holiday at the manor thereafter. I was neither lord nor peasant, guest nor family, but boarded with the steward so I might learn my craft. I was then sent to university. Old Lord Banstock never, by word or glance, acknowledged me as a son. Yet I was known as his bastard over the whole Island, named base-born son in his will, and given the place of agent to the young lord and his bride. Lady Marion and Lord Anthonie became my closest friends as well as kin.

  Viola crouches down on the freshly carved stone where her tiny half-brothers and sisters are interred. ‘Cecily. I liked that name. I wonder if Lady Flora will use it again.’ She rises, rubbing her hands together where the stone has chilled them. ‘The babe was sweet, like a doll.’ She sighs in a moment of sadness.

  ‘There will be another baby.’ I lay my hand upon my lady’s tomb, as if I could warm her bones within. ‘And a marriage. Your mother would be pleased, I think.’

  We look down at the newest stone, still plain. The slab that lies above Viola’s sister’s remains. The master mason who carves the tombstones at Banstock is employed as stonemason at the church at Brading and cannot be spared to inscribe her name for several more months.

  Viola smiles, but it is a sad twist of her mouth. ‘I do miss Elizabeth. And I wish I had known my mother, as she did.’ Then the smile comes out, that warms me, always. ‘But then, I would not have two fathers.’

  When we return to the manor, we find the household in a storm. The rector’s sister, Agness Waldren, who had attended my suffering lady upon the opening of divers sores upon her skin, had whispered a scrap of hearsay of Mistress Isabeau. She accuses her, as I feared someone would, of being papist. Lady Flora is so distressed that her women have sent for my Lord Anthonie to soothe her.

  Since the lady swoons and the midwife has been called, we can do no more than direct Mistress Duchamp to my office, and we question her. The rector’s sister insists on telling us that she knew the Frenchwoman was a Catholic and as such her presence was putting the babe at risk. Myself I think it is rather the relish of the pious woman shrieking such accusations above the head of her afflicted mistress that is dangerous. I have to eject Agness from the room with force, no mean feat as she is as tall as a man and filled with spiritual zeal. I tell her to moderate her tone and avoid any such gossip in my lady’s rooms but she is defiant and, she says, doing the Good Lord’s work. Christ’s mercy save us from such burning piety.

  ‘Moderate the words of the Lord himself?’ she asks, as I bundle the woman down the main stairs. Mistress Agness is of much of the same bony make as her brother, and were I less generous, I would say about as comely. She is a bitter woman. Such I believe is the temperament of some spinsters, for marriage and children soften many a shrew.

  ‘We must show forbearance, and forgiveness, madam,’ I warn her. ‘For our forefathers were Catholic.’

  ‘She is an evil influence.’ The woman is so angry, she spits the words at me. ‘She bewitches the men of this house, even Master Seabourne.’

  ‘Madam, calm yourself.’ I am stern, for I know where such rumours can go. ‘I will have no talk of witchcraft where there is none. What spells are needed where a maid is pretty and unmarried?’

  ‘She should be beaten from the door.’ The woman is red-faced with fury. ‘She should be stoned as a papist.’

  I am forced to shout over her strident tones. ‘You forget yourself! Go back to the rectory, and pray for guidance. For Mistress Duchamp has done no more than be born to a Frenchwoman.’

  Vincent Garland, Steward to Lord Banstock, His Memoir

  13

  Sunday 31st March

  Sage drove out to Banstock Manor along the sunny road from Ryde, daffodils swaying along the banks. She took the turning into a gravel drive with an impressive Queen Anne gatehouse. When she’d called to arrange an interview, Lady Banstock had been eager to invite a ‘real live archaeologist’ as if she was a rare monkey.

  The manor house itself was tempered by the centuries. It had a grand Jacobean frontage but the central part of the house looked older. The walls were made of a light stone, each block a separate entity, the mortar partly weathered away. Two rows of mullioned windows stared out below octagonal chimneys in red brick. The house nestled into a hillside that put its back to the prevailing winds. Trees had been sculpted into shrubs that hunched along the ridge, offering skeletal fingers to the west side of the Island. The portico, built out from the front of the house, had an arched doorway shielding the massive oak door. An older woman, beautifully dressed in patent leather shoes, wool suit and a string of pearls looped to her waist, stood in front of the entrance. Sage parked her car and walked across to greet her.

  ‘Dr Westfield! How lovely to meet you. George has told me all about you. I’m Phyllida, Lady Banstock, but everyone calls me Lady George.’ Her handshake was warm, and her enthusiasm infectious.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to talk to me,’ Sage said.

  ‘Not at all. We’re having a little meeting of the historical society this afternoon anyway, I expect George told you. You’re very welcome to stay for it.’ She led the way across the tiled floor of the portico. ‘We don’t open properly until Whitsun, so we’re busy with conservation work. It’s a constant battle to keep on top of damp, deathwatch beetles, woodworm and moths. We have some eighteenth-century carpets, you know.’

  Sage made impressed noises, as Lady George shut the massive door wit
h a clunk that reverberated around the hall beyond. The floor was laid with tiles, but the original great hall had been divided by panelled partitions. It was still a large room, with a huge fireplace at one end. The walls were hung with portraits of people in all sorts of costume from the 1500s onwards.

  Lady George followed her gaze. ‘Oh, them. Some are of the family, some we bought at auction, a couple are copies. Death duties when George’s father died forced us to sell the really valuable ones. That and the insurance; it costs a fortune each year. We had a couple of portraits by Godfrey Kneller, you know, we had copies done. Visitors expect a lot of memorabilia. The armour we got at a house sale in Wiltshire, it’s always a hit with the school parties.’

  They walked through an arched doorway into a much cosier room, created by the partition, furnished with three mismatched sofas. Sage looked up the panelled walls to the carved wooden ceiling. ‘Is that original?’

  ‘The wood is chestnut. It’s the original roof, which was built between 1529 and 1533. Lovely, isn’t it? No one ever asks about it except historians. Most visitors would much rather fall over the armour or photograph the big table. Now, do sit down. Olivia will bring us some tea – she wants to meet you too.’

  For a moment Sage imagined a Victorian housekeeper. ‘Olivia?’

  Lady George walked to a smaller door in the panelling and opened it. ‘She’s our site manager and archivist. She markets the place so we can afford to go on living here. We’re ideal for weddings and photo shoots. We’re even available for costume dramas, although we haven’t landed one of those yet. Here she is. Olivia, this is Dr Westfield.’

  A slight woman in her thirties pushed the door open, carried a tea tray in and set it on a massive side table. Once Lady George had poured them all a cup, Olivia nodded to Sage.