A Baby's Bones

by Rebecca Alexander

  ‘And the—?’

  She grimaced at him, and waved over his shoulder at Nick as he came in. ‘In the shed at home.’ She realised Lady George was trying to get Felix’s attention, and backed away to finish setting up the laptop to show a slideshow of the exhibits. I could really do with Steph. She gave her a quick ring but got nothing.

  It took until nearly three to get everyone seated. There were about fifty people in the audience. Sage recognised several from the school, the landlord from the pub, who waved, and a row of restless children along the front. She checked her phone again, and then sent another text to Steph. Where are you? Getting worried. Maybe she’d come off her bike. She couldn’t wait any longer so she stood to face the audience.

  ‘Good afternoon, everyone—’ she caught sight of Nick at the back of the room, standing with Lady George. Sat down at the end of the first row was James Bassett in a wheelchair, a stick leaning against his knee. He managed a crooked smile and a wave.

  The talk was easy: she outlined the excavation, introduced the finds and projected images from her laptop onto the wall behind the table. People listened in relative silence, especially when she showed the pictures of the bones. A little ripple of sighs greeted the images of the skulls.

  Two representatives from the Island Historical Society were introduced next, and Sage sat at the side of the table, glancing at her phone. No messages.

  ‘We would like Dr Westfield, and the community, to understand the investigations in the context of what is known about the local history.’ The society’s chairwoman paused for dramatic effect then lowered her voice. ‘There was a witchcraft investigation right here, in Banstock.’

  After a satisfying ripple of reaction, the woman went on, outlining a tale – mostly apocryphal, Sage decided – of witches believed to have communed with the Devil in the ruins of the old abbey. She was mentally preparing for the question-and-answer session that would conclude the presentation, when something the chairwoman said made her look up.

  ‘—and of course, Agness was in a good position to make accusations of witchcraft against the Frenchwoman, Isabelle. Agness was the rector’s sister. If Agness hadn’t disappeared, a witchcraft trial might have included Solomon as a sorcerer, or even Viola as his betrothed.’

  Sage put up a hand, and the woman nodded at her. ‘Dr Westfield?’

  ‘I’m sorry, where does this information come from?’

  The chairwoman held up a brightly coloured hardback titled Tales of a Haunted Village. ‘This was originally published in the 1840s. That was before the churchyard was partly destroyed to make way for the new road.’

  ‘What was the connection with the churchyard?’

  ‘A memorial was put up in the churchyard to the missing sister of a rector, which described how she had gone missing.’ One man passed a copy of the book to Sage. ‘It’s said that witches used to dance around bonfires up on Witch Hill, by the old abbey.’

  There was a good illustration of the monument. Sage stood up and faced the room. ‘We – my assistant and I – have managed to decipher the words on the monument, but there is no connection to witches. It said the rector’s sister was lost in a storm.’

  The chairwoman held up one hand. ‘True enough, Dr Westfield, but when the monument was moved the original rear panel was dropped and shattered. The lost inscription was recorded and is reproduced in the book.’ She held open the page and read clearly. ‘“May God bless this manor and relieve it of foul witchcraft and all manner of devilry.” You know witches were often thought to raise storms.’

  Smiling at the reaction she had achieved, she gave way to the East Wight Genealogical Society. Their spokesman rose to the heightened atmosphere by declaring he was a descendant of Lord Anthonie Banstock. He talked about the early lords of Banstock from research into his family tree, then leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I’m excited to say that we have just republished the letters between Viola and Solomon. They were left to the eleventh Lord Banstock and he originally published them in 1862; we recently found them in the library archives.’

  Sage was astonished, and when he bowed and produced a booklet with a flourish, the audience gave him a round of applause. He turned and handed it to Sage, who flicked through the pages. The letters were all dated from around the late 1500s, and Sage was struck by the different tone of the two authors.

  ‘Can I borrow this?’ she asked.

  ‘Keep it, please, it will be our pleasure to contribute to your investigation.’ The genealogist smiled at the audience. ‘There are more copies for sale from me and we have put a few copies in the manor bookshop.’

  Sage decided it was time to wrap things up. ‘Thank you all for your insights and contributions. We may never exactly know who the people in the well were, beyond that they were a baby, about newborn, and an adult, probably female. But we’ll keep you informed.’

  Several voices spoke up, some asking about Isabeau/Isabelle, some about Agness, even a question about Viola. Sage raised her hands, as she caught a smile from Nick. ‘I’m sure the society’s investigations will continue much longer than mine and I’m really grateful for the chance to put my findings so far in the context of local history.’ And myth, and legend, and fairy tales. She looked around the room. ‘I’ve got time for one more question.’

  A woman maybe a few years older than Sage stood up. She was slim, blonde and beautifully groomed. ‘I have a question for you.’

  ‘Yes?’ Sage smiled at her, even as she registered the tension in the woman’s face. She looked familiar… As recognition dawned Sage could feel herself go pale.

  ‘How long have you been sleeping with my husband?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Sage gripped the table in front of her. She couldn’t find any words.

  ‘Why don’t you tell the people here how you seduced my husband, the father of my children? And now you’re having his bastard.’

  ‘This— this isn’t the place or time,’ Sage stammered.

  The woman – Fliss – folded her arms. ‘It seems like the perfect time and place to me.’

  Sage addressed the rest of the audience. Her face was hot now, scarlet with shame, probably. ‘Well, thank you for coming, everyone. Please come and talk to me if you have any more questions relating to the excavation.’

  Sage stepped away from the table as Fliss walked up to her. ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t know… I don’t know what you want from me. I didn’t know he was married—’ Sage saw several villagers observing the exchange. She lowered her voice. ‘When we met, I didn’t know he was married. He told me he was separated. I’m sorry.’

  Fliss’s eyes were brimming with tears but her face still looked furious. ‘Do you think he’s going to leave you for me?’

  ‘No. It’s over, Marcus and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.’ Sage was keenly aware how many people were listening. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to talk to him.’

  Felix came over. ‘This isn’t the time, as Sage says.’ He towered over Fliss who was a little shorter than Sage. ‘You should pose your questions to your husband, not Sage.’

  ‘He just wanted a bit of fun with you,’ the woman hissed. ‘He’ll never leave me and his kids.’

  ‘No— I mean, I don’t want him to. It’s over.’

  Behind the anger in Fliss’s face was something else, tears in her eyes. Maybe she really loved him, maybe she was afraid she would lose him.

  Felix ushered her away, saying something soothing, while Sage leaned against the table feeling sick. Sick and a bit faint. She closed her eyes for a moment to blot out the curious and disapproving faces. She surveyed the great hall for Nick but couldn’t see him. There had never been a good time to tell Nick, and anyway, it was over. Over the building hum of chatter, Lady George invited everyone into the orangery for tea and cakes. Gossiping loudly, the visitors began to crowd through the double doorway at the end of the hall.

  Sage and the site manager, Olivia, started to pack up the artefacts, an
d Felix returned to help. Nathan wheeled Maeve over in her wheelchair.

  ‘My goodness, girl, you have got yourself in trouble.’ The old woman’s bright eye was fixed on her. ‘And I thought the vicar was sweet on you.’

  ‘I think he was.’ Sage tried a smile, but felt it come out more as a wince.

  ‘And the cottage is playing up, too, I hear. From Den, at the pub. He came to visit me.’

  Sage shrugged. ‘It has a strange atmosphere, that’s all.’

  Maeve shook her head. ‘I’m glad I’m out of there. All those years, and there were bodies just outside the back door. Maybe that noise Ian and I heard was their ghosts, crying.’

  Sage reached out a hand and Maeve took it with her good one. The old woman’s fingers were shaking, the skin dry and warm.

  Sage attempted a smile. ‘I really don’t believe in ghosts, Maeve. Some places seem to have a spooky atmosphere. I’m sure it’s all down to creaky stairs and old pipes.’

  She squeezed Maeve’s hand, then rose and went back to packing up the well finds. Felix leaned down and spoke quickly. ‘Look, Sage, you’ve obviously got a lot more going on here than I thought. I can stay a couple of days, until the end of reading week, anyway. I’ll ask Rose to look through the Seabourne research we have. Let me help.’

  Sage nodded. ‘What about the doll?’

  ‘Keep it out of the house if it worries you. I’ll take a look when I can.’

  Sage managed a half-smile, Marcus’s wife’s anger still ringing through her like electricity.

  * * *

  Sage spotted Nick in the orangery, making polite small talk with various locals. Before she could speak to him, James Bassett approached her, leaning heavily on a cane, looking even taller now he was thinner.

  ‘Well, well, quite a dark horse, our county archaeologist.’

  Sage flushed. ‘Apparently so,’ she said, trying to keep her tone light. ‘You look better. I heard you had the doctor out to the cottage.’

  ‘One blood transfusion and a change of painkillers, and I’m ten times better.’ He smiled gently. ‘Relatively speaking.’ He looked at the crowd through the doorway. ‘I wouldn’t worry. Who hasn’t done something that they don’t want shouted out across a crowded room? There’s nothing the village likes better than a scandal.’

  Sage shrugged, and winced as she heard her name behind her. ‘It’s a really small island.’

  ‘That thrives on gossip, we’re starting to realise that.’ He smiled at her, a little crookedly. ‘The wife will suffer more than you, in the long run. At least you got to be the sexy and seductive mistress. She was just the woman betrayed by an adulterous husband.’ He sat down heavily on a chair, and sighed.

  ‘Is Judith here, or Chloe?’ Sage hoped they weren’t. She wasn’t in Judith’s good books as it was.

  ‘They’re at the cottage with Judith’s mother. Pat’s come to help her. Poor Ju isn’t coping very well at the moment and Chloe is playing up. The police phoned about the nanny cam: they can’t identify the man in the pictures, the resolution is too low. We have had the locks changed; we should have done it when we moved in but the estate agent told us we don’t need to on the Island.’

  ‘It’s a very safe community.’

  Olivia came over to them. ‘Sage, thank you so much for coming, and giving such an informative talk. I’m sorry about that unpleasantness.’

  Sage shrugged. ‘Self-inflicted, I’m afraid. Oh, Olivia, this is Mr Bassett, who owns Bramble Cottage. James, Olivia is the manor’s site manager and archivist.’ They exchanged greetings while Sage looked over at Nick. He caught her gaze, then turned away, bending to hear what a young woman – Mel, the woman she had met at the vicarage, Sage noticed – was saying. She had her hand on Nick’s arm.

  Sage bowed her head, bereft of something she had hardly known she had. A warm hand cupped her elbow and Felix spoke over her shoulder.

  ‘Mr Bassett, I presume?’

  ‘James, please. Maeve tells me you’re an anthropologist. You’re here about the excavation too, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, specifically I’m interested in your well stones. The symbols carved into them have magical meanings, by the beliefs of the day.’

  ‘Did she tell you there were more inside the house? Over the fireplace.’

  ‘She did.’ Felix squeezed her elbow; it was reassuring. ‘I’d love to see them for real.’

  ‘Any time. Well, any time I’m there, anyway.’

  ‘One of my areas of interest is the symbols devised by John Dee and Edward Kelley. They were mathematicians and necromancers from the reign of Elizabeth the First, so contemporary with your well.’

  ‘Necromancer?’ James laughed nervously. ‘Isn’t that raising the dead?’

  ‘Actually, Dee was the country’s foremost mathematician and scientist, as he understood science. Solomon Seabourne, who lived in your house, was one of his students.’ Felix smiled. ‘He was also a famous and passionate scholar, trying to heal the schism between the Catholics and Protestants. He devised the symbols to communicate with angels that he believed were trying to share the system of divine magic with the world. He wanted to speak to the dead to prove there was an afterlife.’

  James laughed. ‘Wow. I suppose he never came here? We could put up a blue plaque. You know: Dr Dee raised the dead here, fifteen something.’

  Sage managed a tight smile. ‘I’d better pack up the van so I’ll leave you to it.’ Felix let go of her arm and she felt colder.

  As she turned, she heard James ask Felix, with a note of anxiety in his voice, ‘Do you think there’s anything to this ghost idea? I mean, I have heard the wailing myself.’

  ‘If you ask our archaeologist, she’ll say no. There’s no solid scientific evidence for ghosts, although there is some for the mechanism by which we see or hear manifestations that we interpret as ghosts—’

  As she walked to the van, Sage dug in her pocket for her phone, but there was no message from Steph. She sat for a moment in the driver’s seat, wishing she could just leave it all, the investigation, the embarrassment…

  Nick tapped on the window and Sage opened the door. ‘Were you just going to sneak off?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Is it over? With the husband?’ His tone was hard.

  ‘It was over before I met you. Really.’

  ‘But you are the sort of woman who has affairs with married men.’

  ‘Yes, I fell in love with a liar who turned out to be married.’ Her eyes stung with tears, more from anger than distress. ‘So you can stop slumming it with fallen women, and go back to your wholesome helper.’

  She pulled the rear doors of the van open and started clearing a space for the specimen boxes.

  ‘I would, if I could,’ Nick snapped, in a low voice. ‘Unfortunately, I’m not attracted to her. Mel is a good friend, by the way, as well as a colleague. She runs my team of volunteers and manages the office when she can.’

  Sage took a step towards the manor’s portico. ‘I have work to do. I have to pack everything up.’

  ‘So that’s it? You’re embarrassed because you didn’t tell me you’d behaved badly, so it’s over?’

  ‘What’s over?’ She stood up, the hair falling into her eyes. ‘I slept on your sofa and we had one dinner. We hardly know each other.’

  He stared down at her. ‘I thought—’

  ‘Well, you were wrong.’ Her anger spilled out, at Marcus, his wife and her own stupidity. ‘I’m out of your league, vicar. I like to live fast and play hard. You can’t keep up with me.’

  ‘Apparently not.’ The stones under his heel crunched as Nick turned, leaving Sage, her temper evaporating, watching him walk away.

  38

  26th September 1580

  Money for the bellringers thirteen shillings and eight pence, to toll upon the dread news that your lordship’s son George Banstock has perished a hero upon Drake’s great undertaking. May the Lord rest his soul.

  Accounts of Banstock Manor, 157
6–1582

  It is with heavy heart that I set out to clear up the mess in the ruins of the old abbey. Our last male heir is gone. George, my favourite of the boys, is dead. Now all hopes rest upon my Lady Banstock and the babe inside her. God grant that it is a boy.

  I send for Master Seabourne and his servant, Kelley, to help me clear up the altar at the old abbey as I do not want the manor servants making more of it than it is. We find the cell much as I left it but the chapel is another matter.

  The altar is covered with fur and dried blood from some animal, which we soon see is a cat, its body straddled upside down over a simple cross made from two boughs tied with string. It has three black paws and one white, and I recognise it as belonging to the wise woman Jennet Dawtry. Not just a wise woman but the village midwife, and as good a Christian as the rector, I say.

  Also on the altar is a girdle, a simple woven thing, only recognisable by virtue of it being formed of the leftover threads of her trade.

  Kelley picks it up between finger and thumb. ‘Is this…?’

  ‘I think it unlikely Mistress Isabeau would leave something of her own here,’ I say. ‘Such would condemn her.’

  ‘She would not – she did not,’ says Seabourne. His colour is high, whether with shame or anger, I cannot tell. ‘She is a true Christian and no witch.’

  ‘I suspect the one person we can be certain did not leave this here is Mistress Isabeau,’ I say, ‘but someone who wished to impeach her. Anyway, this cat is recently killed, and the seamstress has been chaperoned day and night since we returned from London.’ I take the girdle and wrap it in my bag. ‘Best we clean up the mess and burn the poor cat.’ Its jaws, gaping wide, cry its agony endlessly.

  Seabourne nods. ‘Certainly, we three should clean up this abomination. And get the Reverend Waldren to speak cleansing prayers over the chapel.’

  With Kelley sent off to fill his bucket from the abbey well, Seabourne speaks to me in murmurs.

  ‘This is not witchcraft, Master Vincent, but pretence. I have studied the science of sorcery.’