I am shocked that my suspicions are so easily confirmed. ‘Madam, only Master Seabourne, his servant and myself knew how that poor cat came to its end. And the wretch that killed it, of course.’
‘The smith’s boys told me.’ She spits at me, her eyes glaring. ‘You know that the only witch at Banstock is Isabeau Duchamp, a whore who has lain with the Devil and carries his child.’
The murmuring from the crowd tells me they have turned against us again. I dismount, stand among them. I have to shout to be heard. ‘That is not true, Agness Waldren. The woman lay with a mortal man in no more than lust, as well you know, since you spread the rumours all over Banstock!’
‘I don’t believe she was with Master Solomon, and I never will!’ she screeches at me in her strange voice. ‘He has eyes for only one!’ She touches her scrawny breast. ‘He has no need of a wife in the child Viola, nor a whore in the French witch.’
I am shocked. I cannot believe he has even spoken to Agness. ‘You are mad to think he has noticed you, woman.’
‘Will he deny it when I show him what spells seduced him?’ She jumps down from the bench and strides towards me. I am a tall man, but she can look me straight in the eye. ‘The French witch lies. She convinces you with her chants.’
I grasp her wrist, looking behind me for Viola, who is safe by Elias on her palfrey. ‘We must take you home. I think you have lost your senses.’
She wrenches her arm from my grip. ‘Let me go! You are as hag-mazed as the rest.’ With great strides, she runs across the yard and up the hill to the woods behind. She is fast, her long legs pulling her away beyond the reach of the road.
Viola rides forward a few steps, holding her horse’s bridle tight in one gloved hand. She speaks with a clear voice that silences the muttering men and the inn servants.
‘Hear me,’ she says. ‘That poor woman has been tormented by this madness for many weeks now. Her own brother, the rector of Banstock, has tried to contain her but she escaped. She is ill of some brain fever that makes her delirious. My father will grant a reward of a gold angel for any man who can bring her, unharmed, to Banstock Manor.’ She glances at me to make sure the sum is appropriate and I nod. I could probably have got the help for less, but ten shillings was just the incentive the men needed. I can see that Viola’s clothes, her voice and her natural tone of command impress them, and the few remaining caps come off.
‘And let there be no more talk of witchcraft where there is none,’ I say loudly. ‘For to falsely accuse is a crime at the assizes.’ This reminder that I am also a magistrate is enough to get a party moving up the wooded path after Agness. ‘Unhurt, mark you, for the reward!’ I call after them. I reach up to take Viola’s bridle. ‘Well done, child.’
She creeps her little hand onto mine. ‘If there is witchcraft in Banstock I could sooner believe it was Mistress Agness than Isabeau, whatever her sins,’ she says.
I look up at her, and decide it is time she knows all the story, since in some ways it affects her. When I mount my horse, I set the servant to ride behind us. I tell her of the strange doll, and of Solomon Seabourne’s promise to take away the harm in it, if indeed there is any. I even tell her of the cat, though I do not speak of the kittens to save her tender heart.
‘If he can take away the harm, then let him,’ she says. ‘But the evil intent remains. Someone wishes harm to Mistress Isabeau by accusing her.’
‘Someone who is angry and violent. How better to describe Mistress Agness?’ I say, turning my mare’s head for town and the lawyer.
Vincent Garland, Steward to Lord Banstock, His Memoir
45
Thursday 18th April
Sage’s excavation hit Isabeau’s coffin at barely four feet down, the heavy oak casket penetrated by a few tree roots, and largely rotted to black, crumbled cake-like material along the sides. The students and technicians had excavated a platform in the clay each side, so Sage and Elliott had somewhere to crouch while delicately revealing the inside of the casket. The party from the university – led by Yousuf – was accompanied by a police constable to ensure the exhumation didn’t exceed its warrant. It was a reminder that the excavation at Bramble Cottage was now part of a murder inquiry.
The box had partly collapsed onto the corpse, the sides bowed. Felix was by the excavation, taking his own notes. Elliott had appointed himself chief helper, and filled each bucket gently before boosting it up to people at the graveside.
‘I’m amazed there is anything left at all,’ Sage murmured to Elliott. He was pale and hadn’t spoken about talking to the police after Steph’s death, but seemed to want to keep busy.
‘It’s quite a way from the stream,’ he answered, his eyes downcast. ‘Can I lift this bit of lid now?’
The top of the coffin came away in several carefully numbered pieces, and was handed aloft in separate specimen bags. The bones were in situ, the ribcage caved in by the coffin lid but otherwise in good condition. Sage brushed away tiny layers of dirt, of decomposed flesh fallen into dust, to reveal gold thread. The whole skeleton was decorated with designs in it, making a ghostly outline of the body that it had once covered.
‘Wow.’ One of the students leaned in for a closer look as Sage snapped picture after picture. ‘What is that?’
‘Gold embroidery thread. The fabric it was on has rotted away.’ Sage beckoned for the big arc light to be shone on the body, revealing tiny flowers, knotted in places with minute purple beads. ‘I think those are amethyst.’
Elliott lay down on the clay to look around the side of the body. ‘You said this Isabeau might be a seamstress. You would have thought this is much more than an embroideress could afford to wear, let alone be buried in.’ He pointed with a finger, careful not to make contact. ‘These bigger beads are rubies set in gold clasps.’ He leaned forward until his face was almost touching the rib cage. ‘These are minute. Careful, it’s slippery.’
He knelt up and reached a hand to steady Sage as she crouched down at the body’s feet. A flash of something in the mud beside the coffin had attracted her attention, and she pointed it out to Elliott: a tiny flash of gold, a single hook of gold wire, tangled in the debris. He dropped it into a specimen pot. Further searching revealed three more wire curves, and two beads. A larger bead gleamed from a layer of silt, this one still with a thread of gold arcing through it, with a minute eye at each end to connect to the next. As Sage brushed away more sediment, a tangle of gold thread, almost invisible, was washed out, this time hooked through more beads. It was so delicate she had to lift it out with tweezers. It looked like the finest chain, a delicate tangle of wires and beads terminating in a tiny cross, carved out of what appeared to be coral.
‘What’s this? Elliott, give me a box will you? I think it’s all one piece.’
She handed it up to one of the students, who showed it to the others. One of the first-years, who had been looking a bit green at the opening of the coffin, answered. ‘It’s a rosary, isn’t it? I mean – the cross, the beads.’ She looked down at Sage, her colour back. ‘I was confirmed, my parents are Catholic.’
‘I think it is,’ Sage answered.
‘Look at this,’ Elliott said, pointing at the chest area. ‘It’s a ruby cabochon.’
‘Get back, Ell, before you fall in.’ Sage looked up to the ring of students. ‘Anyone know what a cabochon is?’
Felix stepped forward when none of the students answered. ‘I do,’ he said, slowly smiling at her surprise. ‘A cabochon is a gem that is polished into a curved surface rather than cut into facets.’
The cloth the embroidery had been sewn onto had almost completely dissolved, leaving fragments of more resilient linen underneath. A simple shift, its rags were moulded over the pelvis and down the thigh bones. Sage lifted an edge with forceps, and Elliott recorded with the camera.
She spoke softly to him. ‘I think this was cut or torn before burial, this isn’t decay.’
Elliott’s eyebrows almost met in the middle of his foreh
ead. ‘Cut? You mean something happened to her? This wasn’t illness?’
‘Remember the baby?’ Sage found herself choking on the words. ‘The cuts on the bones.’ She raised her voice so she could be heard by those above her. ‘It has been suggested that she – Isabeau – was dying, and someone may have tried to save the baby by performing a caesarean.’
Elliott nodded. ‘So they may have accidentally hurt the child trying to get it out. Those cuts on the baby’s bones.’
Her own baby wriggled inside her, sending tiny shocks through Sage’s bladder. Don’t listen, Bean. She stood up, stretched her back. She was getting too big for this.
Elliott pointed out the bones of the hands, crossed on her chest, mostly in situ. ‘It was unusual to bury people in clothes in the Tudor period,’ he said. ‘I did some research last night; normally bodies were wrapped in a length of cloth.’
Sage nodded, kneeling again to peer at the seams on the remaining shift. ‘The original winding sheet. Look at the fragments of bodice,’ she said, distracted by the delicacy of the web of embroidery. ‘I’m not sure how to get it out intact.’
She could see the heavier, intact neckline of the shift, doubled over and decorated with a line of crossed stitches. She could see the slashes in the wide skirt leading to the thigh bones.
‘OK, everyone.’ She looked up at the students. ‘Can anyone think how we can find out whether this body is the mother of the baby?’
‘DNA?’ offered one of the students.
She smiled. ‘Possibly. Hugely expensive and it’s very likely the DNA would be too degraded in the bones, especially the baby’s, to match.’
The police officer raised a hand self-consciously. ‘If the baby was cut out, you could compare the blade marks if they hit bone.’
‘Straight to the top of the class, Constable. Now our only problem is getting her out with the stitching intact.’
A voice floated down to Sage. ‘I have an idea, I don’t know if it would work…’
‘Yes, Natasha?’
‘Well, we could press sticky paper or cloth to the embroidery, at least pick it up in one piece, and maintain the relationship between the threads.’
Sage thought about it. It would be prohibitively expensive to remove the whole slab of soil underneath the skeleton, and much easier to simply remove the body. ‘Phone the textiles team, see if they can suggest an adhesive and mounting fabric that would be easy to remove.’ She knelt up, and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. ‘Take over, would you, Yousuf?’ She reached up for Felix to help her out.
‘You need to take it easier,’ he murmured.
‘I will. I’m going to the car.’ She felt dizzy. ‘I got up too quickly.’
‘That’s enough. Time to sit down.’ Even though his tone was relaxed, there was something there that made her accept his help to the van, and settle her into the seat. ‘Yousuf knows what he’s doing, as does Elliott. You’ve had a stressful week.’
‘I know.’
He sat in the seat next to her and shut the door. It was a relief to be out of the wind. ‘So, when’s the baby due?’
She leaned her head towards him. ‘June. We’re really going to do small talk?’
He laughed. ‘I think that would be a better idea than all this talk of death. Tell me about Nick. Did you sort things out after the meeting? He seemed a bit… protective, when I saw him at the vicarage.’
‘I’m interested, but it’s not a good time. To start a relationship, I mean.’
‘There’s never a good time.’ Felix stared out through the windscreen. ‘I met my partner when I was investigating an unexplained death in Exeter for the police.’
‘How?’ Sage closed her eyes.
‘Jack knew the girl was there, knew why she had died.’
‘Oh?’
‘Jack believes in sorcery: the sorcery of Dee and Kelley. She gave me the choice of either helping her and respecting her beliefs, or staying out of her life. We’ve been together ever since.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘What I’m saying is, you and your vicar are both single and the attraction is obvious.’
Sage could feel the blush start across her face. ‘Professor of love, huh?’
Felix smiled. ‘I have a professional interest in universal and cultural body language.’
Sage looked up the hillside, spotted here and there with yellow flowers in the grass. ‘What do you think happened to Steph?’
He grimaced. ‘I think she was pushed into the well. Some might say it was predicted by the symbols carved into it.’
‘Someone moved the cover, then pushed Steph in.’ Sage felt sick at the thought. ‘And put the cover back. Someone killed her deliberately.’
‘I’m not arguing with you, other than to play Devil’s advocate. All I’m saying is, some places seem haunted by… misfortune, shall we say. Although…’
‘Although?’
‘I was wondering if the Bassetts would consider letting an acoustic engineer examine the cottage. It has a very strange atmosphere. I can see why people think it’s haunted.’
‘I don’t even think I can go back there. When I close my eyes, I see Steph’s face in the water.’
‘I’m just suggesting there may be something about the cottage that affects people’s behaviour.’
‘There was one thing, though it’s probably nothing.’
‘Go on.’
‘Steph said there was someone hanging around the cottage. I thought – this is going to sound stupid – but I wondered if it was my ex. You know, checking up on me.’
‘Have you told the police?’
Sage sighed. ‘I had to.’
46
28th October 1580
To Mistress Browne, midwife to Lady Flora, upon the safe delivery of her female child two pounds For Master Williams upon the return of the rector’s sister ten shillings
Accounts of Banstock Manor, 1576–1582
A new day at Banstock, after the night was made miserable by the labours of the lady of the manor. The gossips had assembled from the surrounding manors, goodwives to cluck and fuss over the poor woman even before her travail began. Now we are blessed with a healthy girl; not the son we all prayed for, but a hope for the future. The babe, tho’ small, is fat and healthy and God willing, will grow into another daughter for the manor. The lady laboured through the night but at the end the babe was born easily. Lady Flora rests and is naturally exhausted, but the sight of her living child has given her heart and my lord says it was a wonder to see a smile on her lips at last.
‘Next time, brother, a son for the manor!’ It is rare he acknowledges our kinship, but I am named as godfather, as is Master Seabourne. We rarely speak of the fallen sons, so hopefully reared at Banstock, only to die upon maturity; the wound is too raw. In three years Lord Anthonie has lost two sons. Two of his other daughters with Lady Marion survive. One is married to a baron in Devon, but is childless tho’ she eats a barrel of spiders a year and sleeps with cockerel feathers in her mattress. The other has a husband as old as her father, and there are no children yet. Neither are a penny to a pound to our sweet Viola.
She, the proud sister, was present at the labour and was a calming influence upon her stepmother. She feels herself a proper woman now as she is initiated into the great mysteries of childbed. She is busy in the nursery arranging her new sister’s accommodation, no doubt enraging the old nursemaid and the wet nurse, who will complain to me later. So it is when women rule the house.
Isabeau is still in Ryde, living with Eliza Dread. There are those who whisper already that when the witch left the manor, my lady prospered and issued forth a healthy child.
Agness was returned by a farmer, raving, to the manor this morn. She has been confined to a storeroom and made comfortable with a mattress and chair. The woman lies racked by fits of rambling speech, screaming, and crying. Sometimes she is as a child, pleading for her mother; at other times she sc
reeches with accusations and fantastic stories of witches and demons and other horrors. No matter, her madness cannot be heard in the upper floor, where lies my lady and her new baby.
A visit to my lady’s bedchamber, now made comfortable by the uncovering of the windows and the burning of fragrant pastilles, is brief. I admire the baby, carried to my arms reverently by Viola, and remember that this is a new experience for her ladyship. She rests as best she can, in a room full of exultant matrons. She has, I am told, already put the babe to suck, and means to help feed her despite her lord’s preference for a wet nurse. More mouths to feed, think I, with the gossips, the nurses.
Outside, clouds gather thick and heavy, and though it is not freezing it reminds me of snow. I send men to cover haystacks in the open, and I sup sweet wine with the baby in my arms. She is as other babies, her eyes wavering in all directions, yawning and sneezing and farting, but I do not hear her cry. She seems content. She is to be named Lily as requested by Viola, in some remembrance of the last poor lamb. One dies, one is born, such is the nature of life.
Vincent Garland, Steward to Lord Banstock, His Memoir
47
Friday 19th April
In the hospital’s X-ray department, the body, pathetically thin and bundled in its muslin wrappings, appeared more like an Egyptian mummy than Tudor remains. Only the naked skull, jaws open, stood out. The technician slid the tray carrying the skeleton gently along the bed, feeding it into the scanner.
‘This is really kind of you, Miles,’ Sage murmured, from behind the protective window. ‘Professor Sayeed’s going to look at the images when you’ve got them.’
‘I’ll be interested to see what he makes of them.’ The radiographer swept his hair out of his eyes, and signalled to the technician to join them. ‘Come over here, Tomáš, you’ll see something unusual. Bones buried for nearly four hundred and fifty years.’
‘What are you looking for?’ Tomáš peered at the screen as the first images started coming up.
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