‘There are some odd carvings in that beam over the fire. Are they initials?’
Sage stood up to inspect them. ‘I don’t think so. They’re too elaborate.’ The low light in the room didn’t help, and she looked around for a light switch. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead.’
Between the lights and her pocket torch she could make out eight curved marks and one area in the middle of the beam – charred from previous fires – where one might have been. The single piece of oak had twisted along its length, successive owners replastering around it until the whole chimney looked lopsided. There was easily enough room for a chair within the fireplace opening itself. ‘As I said, I spoke to the owners of Banstock Manor,’ she said, crouching down to see the underside of the beam. More deeply carved figures were cut into the surface, under layers of soot. She reached for her phone to take a few pictures. ‘They have more information of who was living here in the 1500s. I’d like to show these to an expert. There are at least a dozen in here.’
She stood up, which made her catch her breath. The pregnancy had fitted somehow into her tall body until the last few days, when it seemed to distort her and change her centre of gravity. The baby wriggled and she rubbed her belly.
‘Do you know what you’re having?’ James smiled, leaning into the cushions, his eyelids drooping. ‘We knew in advance with Chloe.’
Sage grinned. ‘They say it’s definitely a baby but couldn’t be sure of the gender at my last scan. I was wondering if it was a calf, myself, it kicks so hard.’
James laughed. ‘Is the father excited?’
‘It’s just me and the baby.’ Sage picked up her bag, not keen to discuss the intricacies of her love life any further. She gestured at the beam. ‘They remind me of some odd shapes that we found in the well. I’m following them up with an expert, a social anthropologist.’
‘Great. Let me know what you find out.’ He grimaced as if in pain for a moment as he clasped her hand. ‘If I’m here, anyway.’
For a second Sage didn’t know how to respond. ‘It’s good to finally meet you, and I hope we don’t disrupt your home for too much longer.’
‘Sage?’ Elliott popped his head around the door. ‘I’ve got the glass ready for you.’
‘Elliott, this is Mr Bassett.’
While the two men shook hands, her eye was drawn to a few toys on an armchair, one of them a cloth doll. Its black hair had been inexpertly hacked short, and something was stuffing the toy’s jumper. James followed her gaze and laughed.
‘Chloe has really taken to you. She adapted a doll into an archaeologist, complete with baby bump.’
The eyes had been inked in with black. They looked disturbingly like empty sockets.
‘Oh.’ Sage turned to go, but paused when James spoke again.
‘To be honest, I’ve been worried about Chloe. Judith, too. This place seems to make them more – well, gothic. When Chloe has a tantrum – which she didn’t really do, before – I almost expect her head to spin around.’
Sage turned back to him. ‘It’s a terrible time for you all. I’m so sorry.’
His eyes held hers. ‘I know you are. Thank you.’
As she left, Elliott held the door into the hall open for her. Sage could feel tears prickling in the corners of her eyes.
* * *
Two hours later, Sage was turning over fragments of pottery with a finger. Most large Tudor households used earthenware jugs, as well as tableware. Broken pots would end up in the midden, along with food waste. She had plenty of green glazed shards and the curved grey of an imported Bellarmine jug, which would probably be worth reconstructing. It would be a good project for her first-year students, especially as she could see the edge of the characteristic face pressed into the clay before firing. She dropped another handful of spoil in the tray, and she could immediately pick out a star-shaped bone, almost blackened. She washed away the soil that clung to it, and put it on a piece of kitchen paper to dry. It was a perfect human vertebra in miniature, no bigger than a cat’s but less spiny.
She checked the message on her phone again. I was wondering if you would like to drop by the vicarage this afternoon? I have someone coming who might help with your historical puzzle. Come about 3 if you’re free, Nick Haydon. She wondered if he really was interested in her. There was something about the first time they met… She texted him back with an acceptance and got back to recording potsherds.
The sun had moved during the morning, warming the work area. From the occasional muffled comment from Elliott Sage guessed that he was finding more glass, and Steph was photographing and cataloguing, preparing specimen codes and labels ahead of the finds. They already had over three thousand.
‘Dr Westfield?’ Sage jumped at the voice, and looked up to see a stocky man in filthy clothes addressing Elliott. He turned and gave her an appreciative glance, and she could feel colour starting to move to her cheeks.
‘Yes?’ Sage said.
‘I’m Rob Greenway, well specialist. Your boy shouldn’t be down there.’
‘Elliott is conserving extremely rare and valuable Elizabethan glassware.’
He shrugged, tucking his thumbs into the top of his jeans. ‘He’ll be buried along with them if he’s not careful.’
Sage laid out the ground rules. No feet in the bottom of the well, all material to be laid out on the spoil tarpaulin, and not disturbed more than necessary. Greenway was to respect the fact that he was digging up human remains. He listened and nodded, but clearly didn’t understand or value the work.
Sage suddenly had an idea. ‘Follow me.’
He stumped after her around the cottage, calling out for ‘Harry’ as he walked to the road. Sage unlocked the back of the van, and pulled out one of the bone boxes. She gently unwrapped the baby’s skull pieces, moving the face into position. When she looked up, Greenway and Harry seemed stunned.
‘This is what we’re working on. This is a baby, dumped down the well like rubbish. One of the local children. He or she may have been murdered.’
Harry cleared his throat. ‘My granddad, he came from Banstock, way back.’
Greenway reached out a finger, but didn’t touch the bones. ‘Poor little bugger. How old was he?’
‘Newborn, we think.’
Greenway hitched up his jeans. ‘So this is, like, a historical crime scene?’
‘That’s how we need you to treat it. We need you to think like detectives rather than just clear out the well.’
Satisfied that the message had gone in, Sage explained that some of the baby’s remains and half the woman’s bones were unaccounted for. Once she had got Greenway and Harry working, with Elliott standing over them fussing, she felt able to walk through the village to the vicarage.
* * *
The vicarage was a large Victorian building opposite the church, with a gravel drive filled with cars. Sage walked in through the open door, into a long tiled hallway with doors leading off to left and right. A large handwritten sign pointed one way, towards ‘Mums and Babies’. The other way led to a heavy door, and a brass plate that read ‘Reverend Nicholas Haydon’. She knocked.
‘Come in.’
Sage’s first impression was of a solicitor’s office. Hardback books in colour-coded rows were arrayed on built-in bookcases. A heavy oak desk covered with piles of paperwork was surrounded by several mismatched armchairs. One was inhabited by a compact older woman, white-haired, with a colourful scarf knotted around her neck. She watched Sage with dark eyes, as Nick stood to greet her.
‘Glad you could make it, Sage. Mrs Jordan was coming in to talk about raising funds for new books, so I asked her to join us. She has some insights into Bramble Cottage’s history. Kate is our local historian and runs the library.’
Sage smiled, and reached out a hand to the shorter woman, who didn’t smile in return. ‘Nice to meet you. Any help you can give me…’ Her voice faded as the woman continued to stare, then took her hand briefly.
‘I think we’ve met before,’ she said, ‘when you were at school. Is your mother Yana Westfield?’
‘Yes,’ Sage said, cursing her distinctive features. ‘I’m told we do look alike.’
Mrs Jordan looked at Nick. ‘Yana was a medical herbalist on the Island, before your time. I knew her years ago.’
Nick looked surprised. ‘Tea or coffee?’ Nick’s hand hovered over a coffeemaker, half full, and an electric kettle.
Sage nodded. ‘Tea would be great.’ She turned to Kate Jordan, who was still staring at her. ‘What can you tell me about the cottage, Mrs Jordan?’
‘Call me Kate, everyone does. It has a reputation for being haunted.’
Sage smiled her thanks for the tea, and sat on the nearest chair. ‘I’ve heard the stories. I’m more interested in the history.’
‘That’s the thing about the truth,’ Kate said. ‘It’s bound up with the mystery.’ She turned a bracelet on her wrist a few times. ‘Solomon Seabourne lived there in the 1580s. Do you know anything about him?’
Sage shrugged. ‘All I know is his name – oh, and that he wrote some books that are kept in the British Library. Lady George has the covers at the manor.’ Nick silently pantomimed cutting a slice out of a golden cake studded with fruit, and she nodded at him. He handed her a large wedge on a plate.
‘Well, you know he was a famous sorcerer.’ Kate’s words hung in the startled atmosphere of the room before nodding vigorously. ‘Black magic, alchemy, all the dark arts, right here in Banstock. He became engaged to Viola Banstock when her older sister died. Viola was only fourteen.’
‘That wasn’t very unusual at the time for women of high status.’ Sage took a bite of the cake. ‘This is delicious,’ she mumbled through the crumbs.
Kate ignored her. ‘Solomon was a student of famous sorcerers. He was present when Dr John Dee raised a man from the dead.’
Sage swallowed, trying to find a subtle wording for what a load of bollocks.
Nick stepped in. ‘What Kate is saying is that there’s a lot of mythology about Seabourne.’
‘The spells he performed are supposed to haunt Bramble Cottage,’ Kate said. ‘Have you met Maeve Rowland, the previous owner? She says bad luck affects whoever hears the ghostly wailing.’
‘I do wonder where these stories come from.’ Sage eyed Nick again, then shrugged. ‘I’m a scientist. What I have is tragic enough without talk of ghostly voices or black magic. I’m looking for the possible identities of a woman in her thirties or forties, and a tiny baby.’
Kate spoke in a flat voice. ‘Solomon Seabourne seduced a servant up at the manor, a seamstress. It’s a local legend. There’s your woman and baby.’
Sage sipped her tea. ‘The problem with that theory is that the woman’s skeleton has no signs of ever having been pregnant. The baby seems unrelated. It is possible it was an emergency plague deposition, but there are suggestions of injury to the child. People in that time took Christian burial very seriously and this feels like an illicit dumping of bodies.’
Kate leaned forward. ‘Something else you might not know. Solomon paid for the church tower, as penance for an unknown sin.’
‘I was told that when I first got here,’ Nick said. ‘I looked him up.’ He pulled out a piece of paper from a pile on the desk. ‘There are entries in the church records, the previous vicar had the originals copied and bound; I looked it up. Three hundred and forty pounds for the building of the tower, and eighty-eight pounds and seven shillings for the casting of two bells. Nothing about penance, though.’ He held out the photocopy. ‘I can just about read the entry itself, but the notes are a mystery.’
Sage took the paper and held it up to the light. Beside the main entry, there were some heavily inscribed notes in Early Modern English. ‘“That the bells be inscribed with names…”’ she read out. ‘I can hardly read this.’ She felt around in her pocket for her hand lens, and peered at the letters. ‘“…and that the smaller be named Isabeau, and the larger Viola.”’
There was a long silence. Nick broke it. ‘Why two bells? I know Isabeau’s name, was she his mistress?’
‘It seems a bit inappropriate to name one after his wife and one after his mistress, if that’s what they were,’ Sage interrupted, with a note of scepticism. ‘Kate, does the legend you mentioned explain how this seamstress died?’
‘Well,’ Kate began, ‘you’ve heard the story. Her ghost – the book calls her Isabelle – is supposed to wander through the village looking for her baby.’
‘What book? Nick told me a story about the Devil attacking her at the gate of the church.’
Kate pulled a book out of her bag and opened it with a flourish. ‘I brought this over from the local history collection at the library. The vicar of Banstock in the 1800s transcribed some of the parish documents and published them. He added a lot of his own speculation and local gossip.’ The modern reprint was called Banstock Tales. Sage took it, leafed through it. There was very little from the Tudor period except a bit about the dissolution of the local abbey. Then a startling page.
‘Listen to this. “And we received the dread news that his lordship’s son, George, did die at sea upon Drake’s great undertaking, being the last male heir. Then did his lordship announce the betrothal of his youngest daughter Viola to Master Solomon Seabourne, a scion of that great seafaring family. So did the sea deliver as it has taken away.”’ She squinted at the date, written in a footnote. ‘This was written by the rector of the church in 1580. And we know Isabeau lived here and had a bell named after her by Solomon.’
‘Look at all the witnesses to the betrothal.’ Kate squinted at the page. ‘I could do with my glasses. It’s like they invited everyone with a title in the south of England. Lord… Thomas Seabourne, is that right? The father-in-law?’
‘I’ll have to look that up.’ Sage sat back, glancing up to see Nick smiling down at her.
Kate scanned the next few pages. ‘He doesn’t write about the wedding.’
‘Maybe it happened in London or at the Seabournes’ estate. Or maybe,’ Sage shrugged, ‘those documents were just missing by the 1800s. There must be a load of gaps.’
Nick leaned forward. ‘It’s mostly gaps. No mention of Isabeau?’
Kate shook her head. ‘Just the story of the Devil coming for her at the church gate. I thought it would make a great ghost story for Halloween at the library a couple of years ago. I couldn’t back it up with any hard facts.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I still used the story of course.’
Sage finished her lukewarm tea. ‘That’s all great information but there’s no evidence that links to the woman or the baby in the well. I doubt if they would be mentioned in the parish records if they ended up dumped like rubbish.’ The baby kicked inside her, as if in protest, and she rubbed her belly to comfort it. She noticed Nick watching her hand.
‘We’ll keep looking. We’ve got all sorts of parish records held at the library and the county library,’ he said. ‘This seems like something the historical society will want to work on. It would be nice to bury the skeletons with names, at least. More tea?’
Sage looked at her watch. It didn’t seem fair to leave Steph and Elliott for too long. ‘I’d love to stay, but I’d better get back to work. Thanks for the cake. Nice to meet you, Kate.’
‘I’ll see you out.’ Nick put a hand under her elbow, and the warm pressure stirred something in Sage. He guided her through the door.
At the porch Sage turned to him. ‘Nick—’ she didn’t know what to say. The weight of his bereavement and the baby stirring stalled what she was going to say. ‘I spoke to Judith and James – well, James really. He said he’d be OK with a meeting to discuss the excavation and the burial, just to get you in the door.’
‘Thank you. That would be a start. I’ll phone him, set up a meeting.’
Sage nodded. ‘It’s all very sad. The dig, I mean. I understand the locals are going to be upset. If we can put out information about the dig it will be better for everyon
e.’
‘Thank you for all the care you’re taking over this.’
‘Of course. Now I’ve really got to get back to work; I’ve left Elliott defending the dig from two builders.’
‘Will you be around tomorrow?’ Nick asked.
‘I’m off to the mainland for a couple of days. I’m going to consult with an expert tomorrow, then I’ve got a chance to do some research and maybe look at ways to get funding. I’ll be back on Thursday.’ She turned away, wrapped her coat around her in the sudden chill and stepped onto the drive. Parked illegally in front of the church was a red car that looked exactly like Marcus’s. Before she could make sure, it was gone, accelerating down the hill towards the harbour.
16
14th August 1580
Dowry for Mary Fitton at your lordship’s beneficence ten pounds
Accounts of Banstock Manor, 1576–1582
It is a time of whispers and rumours, thanks to the wagging of Agness’s tongue. The Reverend Matthew Waldren, her own brother, gave a lesson upon the dangers of spreading malicious rumours that kept even Lord Anthonie awake. It left the men of the manor whispering, and I am afraid to say, gazing at Mistress Isabeau. The seamstress always worships with the rest of the household, sitting aside from the men and with my lady’s waiting women, as is proper. She makes all the right responses and gives no hint of popishness, yet she must have been brought up a Catholic, being a Frenchwoman raised in the heart of Queen Catherine de’ Medici’s court. She quietly performs her duties, working in the sewing room on exquisite gold embroideries and embellishments. There are more whispers in the village, I hear.
So I take myself to the alehouse, and there make myself comfortable by the empty fireplace. I buy a few jugs of beer and we toast our fine harvest until no man is steady of foot or tongue.
As the landlord pours more cups of his strongest ale, the men begin to speak. They turn to me to ask if the French maid be a papist and they tell me rumours of a priest hidden at a manor near Newport. I disclaim all knowledge of any such, but the men and boys at the manor are like to make a spark into a bonfire. I chide them, as the seamstress is closely chaperoned by Lady Banstock’s waiting women. They tell stories of her creeping out of doors after dark, when my Lady Flora and I were in London with Lord Anthonie. The tittle-tattle told of lights seen at the ruined abbey, late at night. This gave me a little disquiet, but I rubbished such talk, and if it were after dark, how could anyone see who attended such meetings? But I admit, I was worried. There is, they say, no smoke but from fire, and gossip is blowing on those embers.
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