Quinn answered the phone, her voice breathless with anticipation. “Colin, hi. Do you have something for us?”
“I do, indeed. Would you like to come by the mortuary?”
Quinn glanced at her watch. She was due to meet Gabe for lunch in an hour. Perhaps they could skip the meal and visit Colin instead. She knew that Gabe was as anxious for the results as she was. “Would noon be convenient?”
“Absolutely. See you then.”
Quinn fired off a text to Gabe and returned to the party invites. Emma had asked for a Frozen-themed party, which wasn’t the easiest of feats to pull off in August, but Quinn was determined to make Emma’s first birthday with them as special as possible. She’d booked a private instructor at Queens skating rink. The instructor would teach the children to skate for half an hour, then give them another thirty minutes of free skating time. After, the kids would adjourn to the arcade, where they’d be allowed to play only age-appropriate games, and then on to the in-house restaurant for pizza and birthday cake.
“Quinn, I don’t think that venue is geared toward children,” Gabe had protested when Quinn brought up the idea. “They have a bar, and some very violent games. The other parents won’t approve,” he’d added lamely.
“Leave it to me,” Quinn had replied with more confidence than she’d felt. “I have a plan for keeping the children in line. Besides, I seriously doubt there will be many hard-drinking, snooker-playing types at Queens at ten in the morning.”
Quinn wasn’t at all sure if her idea would work, but it was worth a try. She’d had no contact with Jude since the dinner Sylvia had invited them to, and thought this might be a way to make inroads with him. She’d asked Logan for Jude’s mobile number and left him a voicemail, asking him to call her.
Jude had taken his time, but did return the call eventually. “What’s up?” he’d asked.
“Hi, Jude. How did your tour go?” Quinn asked.
“All right.” Jude wasn’t a man of many words, but he’d called her back, and that was a start.
“Your mum said that you’re between jobs at the moment, so I was wondering if you might be interested in a paying gig,” Quinn said, praying that Jude wouldn’t be mortally offended by her idea.
“What gig might that be?”
“We’re having a birthday party for Emma on August ninth, at Queens,” Quinn began. “She’s turning five.”
“So, you’d like my band to play some heavy metal for the kiddies?” Jude asked. He oozed sarcasm, but he hadn’t hung up yet.
“No, actually, I’m in need of a prince.”
“What?”
“Emma has asked for a Frozen-themed party and I thought that some of your friends might like to make some extra money by dressing as the characters and mingling with the children. I’ll rent the costumes, of course.”
“You must be joking,” Jude sputtered.
“Well, if you have no need of money…”
“How much you payin’?”
“Fifty quid for two hours, for you and any willing victim,” Quinn replied. Fifty quid was nothing to sneeze at, especially when all they’d have to do was some glorified child-minding and amateur skating. No triple-axel jumps required.
“Any nibbles and plonk included?”
“I’ll spring for pizza, but there won’t be any alcohol at a children’s party.”
“Is your wanker of a husband going to be there?”
“Yes, he’s going to be there, and don’t call him that. He was well within his rights when he called the cops on you, and you know it.” Quinn wasn’t about to apologize for Gabe’s behavior. He had her undying support, now and always.
“All right. Fine. I’ll think on it. How many people you need?” Jude asked.
“Four.”
“Right. Let me ask around and see if anyone is desperate enough to make a complete ass of themselves.”
Jude hung up without saying goodbye, but called Quinn two days later. “Okay, I have a couple of mates lined up. Bridget thinks it’s sweet what you’re doing for the kid. She liked Emma. So, here’s the deal. Bridget will bring a friend, and they’ll be Elsa and Anna. I’ll do Prince Kristoff, and I have a mate who’s willing to make a fool of himself as Olaf. That’s two hundred quid, cash up front, lunch included, and if you post any photos of us on social media, I’ll put a hit out on you.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Your Highness,” Quinn replied, smiling. The hardest part of the deal would be not posting photos on social media, since some of the children might like to be photographed with the characters, and their parents might post them despite promising not to.
Quinn couldn’t help smiling to herself. Beneath Jude’s prickly exterior, she could sense a thawing in his attitude toward her. Perhaps this could be the first step in establishing some sort of a relationship.
Quinn winced when she remembered the bond she’d thought she was establishing with Brett. He’d certainly led her up the garden path, but she’d be more careful with Jude.
“I reserve the right to strip search him before he enters the premises,” Gabe had threatened.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Quinn retorted. “Sylvia said Jude is clean.”
“About as clean as a fireship,” Gabe replied, still annoyed.
“Gabe, that’s uncalled for. Comparing Jude to a pox-ridden prostitute is beneath you,” Quinn said, putting her hands on her hips for emphasis.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I just worry about Emma.”
“I know you do, but give Jude a chance. You did misjudge the situation last time.”
“I made a judgement call based on the facts I had available to me. And I would call the coppers on him again,” Gabe said. “Now, can we drop this? I’ll be nice to Jude and his friends, but I will keep an eye on them. You can be sure of that.”
“This ought to be fun,” Quinn muttered, but allowed the subject to drop.
Chapter 23
“I’ll never get used to this smell,” Quinn said as she followed Gabe down the corridor to the mortuary. The usual stench of carbolic, decay, and desperation hung over the premises, making her wince. She felt sorry for the poor people who had to come to the mortuary to identify the remains of their loved ones. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it was usually the result of either suicide or violence, and the sight wasn’t for the faint of heart, even when only the face of the victim was visible.
“You’re not meant to be used to it,” Gabe replied. “It’s revolting.”
Quinn knocked on the door and poked her head in. Sarita Dhawan was seated in front of the computer, typing rapidly. Her ebony hair was wound into a bun atop her head and her stylish glasses appeared to be sliding down her nose.
“Hello there,” Sarita called out. “Dr. Scott said you’d be stopping by. He’ll be back shortly. He just popped out to get a sandwich. Give me a moment to finish entering these autopsy results and I’ll walk you through to the lab.”
“Find anything interesting?” Gabe asked as they followed Sarita into an adjoining room where their skelly was laid out on a metal slab, completely reassembled and thoroughly cleaned.
“I’ll let Dr. Scott fill you in,” Sarita replied. “He’d have his nose out of joint if I stole his thunder.”
“Ooh, there’s thunder,” Quinn said, rubbing her hands in anticipation. “I can’t wait.”
“Did you work with Colin on this?” Gabe asked, standing over the bones gleaming beneath fluorescent lights.
“I ran tests on the fabric, leather, and hair,” Sarita replied. “Fascinating stuff.”
“Sorry I’m late,” Colin called out as he walked into the lab. He shook hands with Gabe and kissed Quinn’s cheek before pulling on a pair of latex gloves and approaching the remains.
“So, what can you tell us about him?” Gabe asked.
Colin smiled happily, his eyes crinkling with good humor. “The first thing I can tell you about him is that he is a she,” he announced, looking gratified by Gabe’s
shocked reactions.
“Are you sure?” Gabe asked. “I’ve never come across a Christian woman buried with a sword. Of course, there were Saxon women, and Celts, who were warriors, but women of the Middle Ages didn’t often go into battle.”
“It’s not her sword,” Colin replied, grinning as though he were thoroughly enjoying himself.
“How can you tell?” Gabe inched closer to the skeleton and stared down at the bones, as if they would suddenly reveal all to him. Of course, he already knew that the sword didn’t belong to the woman on the slab, but scientific proof was what counted in archeological circles.
“Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?”
Quinn and Gabe nodded eagerly.
“What we have here is a female, aged between twenty and twenty-five.” Colin pointed to the bone at the base of the spine. “The shape of the pelvic cavity, the angle of the greater sciatic notch, and the mandible shape and its ramus all prove that she was indeed female. I have determined her age by scoring the epiphyseal closure of the sacrum to determine the age at the time of death. Her humerus bone is a maximum of thirty centimeters and the femur is a maximum of forty-three centimeters, which tells me that she was between four-foot-seven and five-foot-two.”
“Fascinating,” Gabe said as he studied the remains. “Go on.”
“Based on Carbon-14 dating, I’d say she lived in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. And she was no warrior; she was a lady. If you look at her wrists, you’ll see that they are very delicate. A person who routinely performs hard physical tasks, such as wielding a sword, develops ridges at the site where the muscle was attached to the bone and pulled over the years. I see no such ridges here. I think this woman came from a wealthy family. Her teeth are in excellent shape, which means she enjoyed a varied and plentiful diet. The bits of fabric and leather support my theory. The fabric is a fine velvet, which was dark blue in color originally. There are tiny bits of gold thread, and the stiches, or what’s left of them, are very fine. A woman who wasn’t well to do would be wearing homespun, dyed with basic dyes obtained locally. The homespun would have disintegrated after all these centuries, being more loosely woven and much thinner in texture. I would also venture to suggest that she had well-made shoes, not the coarse leather shoon worn by the poor, where both shoes were exactly the same and could go on either foot. The leather is from a calf, not a fully grown cow. Also a luxury.”
“And her DNA?” Quinn asked. She’d seen strands of hair still clinging to parts of the scalp, which was now washed clean.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a whole follicle, but we ran whatever tests we could on the hair strands themselves. Our lass had auburn hair and light eyes—either blue or green. She was fair-skinned, as people with her coloring tend to be. Her DNA shows traces of Saxon, Norman, and Scottish ancestry, which, given the area where she was found, is very common.”
“Did she have children?” Quinn asked as her hand automatically went to her stomach, where baby Russell was in the middle of a particularly exuberant somersault.
“I don’t believe so.”
“How did she die?” Gabe asked, fast forwarding to the most important question.
“I haven’t a bloody clue,” Colin replied, spreading his hands in a gesture of puzzlement. “She was as healthy as a horse, from what I can see. Her skull is intact,” he added, caressing the gleaming skull tenderly. “There are no nicks on her bones, which would indicate a knife or sword wound. There are no fractures, recent or well healed.”
“So, what would a very healthy young woman die of, if she didn’t die in childbirth?” Gabe persisted.
“A fever, perhaps. The plague wasn’t rampant in that area during the second half of the fifteenth century, so I don’t think that would have been the cause. She might have drowned,” Colin added thoughtfully. “A drowning would leave no visible traces after all this time. I can’t help wondering why she was buried with a sword though,” he continued, cradling his chin in speculation. “My theory would be that someone wished to honor her. Perhaps it was her husband’s sword. If he died in battle, it might have been the only thing she had left of him, so it was buried with her. What I can’t figure out is why she was buried in the kitchen.”
“I think we can answer that,” Gabe jumped in. “We believe the kitchen was, in fact, the chapel back in the fifteenth century.”
“Really? That would make sense then,” Colin said. “Was there just the one body?”
“As far as we know. We’d have to dig up that entire section of the ground floor to find out for sure.”
“I don’t think your mum would be too pleased with that plan,” Colin said with a chuckle. “My mum goes ballistic if you so much as move one knick-knack out of place.”
“She refused to stay in the house until we removed the remains,” Gabe said.
“Understandable. It’s not pleasant knowing you’ve been walking over someone’s grave all these years. Well, do let me know when you have the sword back in your possession. I’m dying to see it.”
“Will do,” Gabe replied.
“Perhaps you and Logan can come to our place for dinner,” Quinn suggested.
“That would be lovely. See you soon.”
Quinn and Gabe thanked Colin and left the mortuary, grateful to be out in the fresh air and sunshine after the windowless confines of the morgue. They had time for a quick bite before Gabe was due to return to work, so they found a Costa and placed their order.
“You didn’t seem surprised when Colin said the remains were those of a woman,” Gabe said as he unwrapped his sandwich and added sugar to his coffee. He lowered his voice so the other patrons wouldn’t hear him discussing such a grim topic, but a woman at the next table threw him a look of pure venom nonetheless and moved her chair further away, scraping the floor loudly in the process.
“I didn’t know the skeleton was of a woman. I assumed it was Guy, just as you did.”
“Do you think it’s Kate?”
“I couldn’t say. I’ve seen very little of her story so far.”
Quinn felt reluctant to talk about Kate. She supposed that after getting emotionally involved with Elise, Petra, and then Madeline, she’d tried to keep Kate at bay and look at her through a lens of professional detachment. She had to avoid stress, for the sake of the baby, and she handled the rosary for brief periods and mostly during the early hours of the day, so as not to dream of what she’d seen when she went to bed. She had enough bad dreams as it was.
“Gabe, what do you know of Guy?”
Gabe shrugged. “I know that he existed, and I know that he was the brother of William and Hugh, and the son of Armand and Marie de Rosel. Not much else is known about him.”
“Do you know when he died?” Quinn asked cautiously.
“Yes. Shall I tell you?”
“Not yet. And what do you know of William and Hugh?”
“Not a whole lot. William de Rosel died at the Battle of Towton, which you already know. He was thirty-two at the time, and left behind a son, Adam, from whom I’m descended. It was Adam de Rosel who changed the name to Russell in the sixteenth century.”
“Why?”
“Probably because he wished to anglicize it. De Rosel sounded very French, and given the ongoing animosity between France and England it made sense to fit in, if he meant to remain in England. Previous generations of de Rosels had maintained their ties to France, but Adam put a stop to all that.”
“Did Guy or Hugh ever marry?” Quinn asked.
“I tried to research my family history when I was a teen, but only found information on Adam’s descendants. There’s a family tree that goes back to the Conquest, but it makes no mention of either Guy or Hugh’s nuptials. Perhaps they died before they had a chance to marry.”
“Interesting.”
“Do you think the woman might be Adam’s mother, Eleanor?” Gabe speculated. “I know Colin said that she likely didn’t have children, but it’s possible that he’s mistaken, esp
ecially after all this time. Perhaps she had a very easy labor that left no mark on her pelvis. The child could have come early, and been very small.”
“Surely, even a small child would leave its mark if it was nearly full term,” Quinn argued.
“What if she had a cesarean? The procedure would surely kill her, but since the child didn’t pass through the birth canal, there’d be no way to tell that she’d given birth.”
“I don’t think cesarean sections were very common in the fifteenth century, but I know for a fact that it isn’t Eleanor. She survived Adam’s birth and suffered a stillbirth just before William died. She bore two children, and Colin would spot that immediately.”
“I have to go,” Gabe said as he finished his lunch. “Will you be all right?”
“Of course. When do you think you’ll get the sword back from Dr. Edwards?”
“Today or tomorrow. I have to find a good hiding place for it, what with Emma nosing around for her birthday presents. Perhaps we can wrap it in a towel and hide it on top of the wardrobe. She can’t reach up there.”
“Neither can I,” Quinn replied with a chuckle. “It won’t be that easy to keep it away from me.”
“You can’t blame a bloke for trying,” Gabe replied with a sigh. “You won’t rest until you know what happened, will you?”
“Shall I stop now?” Quinn asked innocently, and was rewarded with the reaction she’d hoped for. Gabe was desperate to know what happened. “You’re just as hooked as I am, Dr. Russell.”
“They’re my ancestors.”
“Exactly. You owe it to yourself to discover their story. Bring back that sword.”
“All right,” Gabe capitulated. “I’ll see you both tonight.” He placed his hand on Quinn’s belly as he kissed her, then left for work.
Chapter 24
Quinn stared into her empty cup and pondered what to do. It was a lovely day outside, and she didn’t feel like returning to the empty flat. She knew she was meant to be taking it easy, but sitting around for hours on end with nothing specific to do raised her stress levels more than actually being productive. She wasn’t someone who could spend hours watching television or gobble up one book after another in a futile attempt to keep her mind occupied. She did keep a stack of pregnancy manuals by the bed and consulted them every night, learning in minute detail what the baby might look like at any given stage and what developmental milestones were to be expected within the next week or two.
The Forsaken (Echoes from the Past Book 4) Page 13