Matt’s arrival has unsettled me, too. He has come from the outside, like a sailor back from the sea, bringing a whiff of the ocean, a sense of the world beyond the moors. Now the Hall feels even more claustrophobic than it did before. I am longing to leave, but where can I go? I have looked at my finances, and it appears that I have just under four hundred pounds to my name. I know my parents would say that for some people that is an unimaginable fortune, but it doesn’t seem a lot to bring up a child. Effectively, I am living entirely on the Vavasours’ charity. I will give myself until Christmas, I decide, and then I will find a job, any job. There must be child support that I can claim, and housing benefit, perhaps, until I am settled. I will manage, somehow.
But I can’t go anywhere until I remember. It is not lack of money that keeps me here, it is my lack of memory. I need to remember, that is clear in my mind, but the more I strain to fill in the blanks of the months leading up to my fall, the denser and more resistant my memory becomes.
All in all, I am tired and out of sorts, and in no mood for Philippa’s needling. She is sitting on the library desk, kicking her heels against the old wood and ignoring Joanna’s pointed frown.
‘So, how did you get on with Hollywood last night?’ she asks me, and I bang down the cardboard lid of the box.
‘His name’s Matt, and I don’t want to discuss that either.’
‘Ooh, touchy, touchy!’
‘Are you here to help or just get in the way?’
She gazes moodily out at the driving rain. ‘I’ll help.’
Once she gets into it, Philippa is surprisingly efficient and less likely to get distracted by a photograph or by reading out a snippet from a letter, but even she stops when Joanna unearths an old photograph album.
‘Oh, look, it’s Daddy during the war,’ Joanna exclaims.
Sure enough, there is Ralph Vavasour looking dashing in his pilot’s uniform. There is one of him leaning against a car with Adam Kaczka. They both have cigarettes in their hands and are smiling their devil-may-care smiles. The bond between them leaps out of the photo: it is the friendship you notice first, and then the friends.
‘That’s Angie’s grandfather,’ I say, and Philippa looks curiously over Joanna’s shoulder.
Adam? God, I’d never have recognized him. I used to be terrified of him when I was little,’ she tells me. ‘He was always drunk and shouting in Polish.’
I notice there are no photos of Dosia, but perhaps that’s not surprising.
Joanna turns the pages of the album. Each is divided from the next by a gossamer-fine sheet of waxed paper, and the photographs are stuck in with corners. More pictures of Ralph, and then there is Margaret standing next to him at a party. She is wearing long evening gloves, holds a cigarette holder in her hand, and the boat-shaped neckline of her gown shows off her clavicles to perfection. Her smile is wide, her eyes huge and luminous. She looks like Vivien Leigh or one of those other impossibly glamorous movie stars, too flawless to be real, her lipstick perfectly glossed to catch the light.
‘She was stunning, wasn’t she?’ Joanna’s voice holds a kind of awed pride as she studies her mother. There is Margaret skiing in Gstaad, Margaret shooting in the Highlands, Margaret sitting on a yacht on the Riviera, always surrounded by other beautiful people. It is as if nothing plain or ordinary could be allowed into the charmed circle that surrounded her.
And here is the famous wedding shot, the fairy-tale ending to Margaret’s glorious progress through the social scene. ‘Were they as happy as they look here?’ I ask Joanna.
Joanna looks troubled as she closes the album. ‘Things were different in those days. More private. They weren’t all over each the way couples are nowadays.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ says Philippa with a shrug.
For some reason I find myself blushing. Were Michael and I ‘all over each other’? Or, worse, Matt and I? But no, Matt said we were just friends.
Apart from that one time. The time I’m not sure I want to remember, but can’t stop thinking about. What was it like? How did I feel? Where did he touch me?
Philippa digs out another album, of Joanna and Jasper as children, and flicks through it while I carry on unpacking the archive box. I can see the photos out of the corner of my eye. Jasper and Joanna look stiff and unhappy in most of them, and I remember the picture of Joanna hanging around Marek’s neck and laughing. I am on the verge of telling her about it and the other photos of Dosia’s that I have put aside to scan for the display when I am distracted by pulling a leather-bound book out of the box.
‘It’s a diary,’ I say, opening the book and squinting at the closely handwritten lines. ‘I wonder what the date is – oh!’ A folded sheet pressed between the pages has fallen out and I put down the diary to open it carefully.
The paper is very fragile, and covered in what look like tiny squares and cramped black ink marks.
‘What is it?’ asks Joanna, intrigued, and Philippa closes the photo album so that she can see, too.
‘I’m not sure.’ I hold the sheet at different angles to see if that makes it any clearer. ‘Something about funeral monuments?’
‘I wonder if it’s the plan of the church floor before it was repaved in the eighteenth century?’ Joanna says suddenly.
‘It could be.’ I am excited. ‘The vicar told me something about a plan drawn up by an antiquarian. Maybe this is it?’
Together we pore over the sheet. Once we know what we’re looking for, it’s easier to decipher the spidery writing. Our helpful antiquarian recorded the position of all the gravestones inside the church, together with the names and dates of birth and death that were still legible in the eighteenth century. Some of them go back a long way.
‘Look, here’s one for 1569!’ Joanna points and then squints at the text. ‘Rad something Vavasour?’
‘Ralph Vavasour,’ I say without thinking.
Philippa looks at me in astonishment. ‘How do you work that out?’
‘Ralph was Radulpbus in Latin.’ I have no idea where the words come from. Ralph was Edmund’s grandfather, I know that.
‘I didn’t know you knew Latin.’
Nor did I. ‘It must be one of those things I’ve forgotten I know,’ I say weakly.
I lean back over the plan. ‘Can you see a Christopher Vavasour anywhere?’
‘Christopher?’ Philippa is still regarding me curiously. ‘Who’s he?’
‘I think he was Edmund’s son,’ I say, preoccupied with searching for Kit’s grave.
‘And who might Edmund be?’
I hesitate. ‘His tomb’s in the church,’ I say after a moment, my eyes not quite meeting hers. ‘I’ve been, er, doing some research on him, and I think I read somewhere he had a son.’
Joanna is moving her finger over the plan, trying to work out dates. ‘Here’s another early one – 1604. Oh, could it be Edmund’s wife? Uxor Edmundi . . . uxor is wife, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but . . .’ I open my mouth to say that Edmund’s wife was buried under the Visitor Centre, but Joanna is still deciphering.
‘It’s hard to read . . . looks like a “j” . . . and is that a “d”?’
Philippa nudges Joanna aside to have a closer look. ‘Judith, looks like,’ she says. The name seems to explode in the silence of the library and hits me square in the belly, driving the air from my lungs.
‘Judith?’ I echo sharply when I have caught my breath. ‘Judith wasn’t Edmund’s wife!’
They both look up, surprised by my vehemence. ‘There must be some mistake!’ I say. ‘Let me see!’
The tiny lettering dances in front of my eyes, and I squeeze them shut to steady myself before I can look to where Joanna’s finger is still pointing. It looks enormous against the miniature print, a giant’s finger thrust onto the page. At first I can’t see anything but that in grotesque detail, where she has chewed the skin by her nail, the creases across the joint, the ragged cuticle, but at last I can focus on the letters, and no matter ho
w hard I look at them, I can’t make them say anything other than ‘Judith’. There is no way it can possibly be mistaken for ‘Isabel’.
And anyway, you know where Isabel was buried, a voice inside my head reminds me. She wasn’t buried in the church because she committed suicide, didn’t she?
But Judith, Edmund’s wife? ‘No, that’s all wrong,’ I say, dry-mouthed as I back away from the table, shaking my head furiously. ‘That’s not right. Edmund wasn’t married to Judith.’
Philippa and Joanna exchange a look. ‘How do you know?’ Philippa asks. ‘I thought we didn’t have any evidence about his wife.’
‘We do!’ My voice rises in spite of myself and I wave a hand wildly in the direction of the Visitor Centre. ‘We found her bones!’
‘Kate, we don’t know who that was,’ Joanna says, carefully reasonable.
‘I’m telling you, it was Isabel! Edmund’s wife!’
Another look passes between them. ‘Uh-oh,’ Philippa says with a wary glance at me. ‘This is what you were like before your accident. You kept banging on about those bones. You were completely batty about them.’
I stare at them in mute frustration, remembering too late that Angie has told me they have been through all this before. I know that if I tell them how clearly I remember Isabel’s life they will decide that I am crazy; if I don’t, they will conclude that I am crazy anyway. My head is pounding: sharp, jarring blows that make my eyes twitch. In desperation I press the heels of my hands to them, and memory slams into my mind like another brutal hammer blow.
I remember sinking onto a stool with my hands just like this, pressed hard against my eyelids. My head was roaring with pain, and the rustle of approaching skirts scraped at my nerves.
‘Isabel?’ Judith’s voice was low with concern. ‘Isabel, dearest, what troubles you?’ She placed a tender hand on my shoulder. ‘Is it the headache again?’
‘I cannot think,’ I muttered between my teeth. ‘I feel as if my head is about to break into little pieces.’
‘Come, lie down. I will bring a rose cake to bind to your head. It will take away the pain.’
I stood unresisting as Judith gently unpinned my skirt and sleeves, and loosened my laces so that she could draw my bodice off, and when I was down to my smock, she bade me lie on the bed while she went to fetch the cake she made with pressed rose petals.
Boom, boom, boom went my head. It had been like that ever since Edmund had been summoned to court. I longed for him to come home but scorned to write and say that I needed him. So I wrote news of the bees, of the honey we had collected from the hives in the orchard, and of the wool that was baled up and ready to be sent down the river to York. I told him I had had to poultice one of the palfreys and asked if he would send two pounds of starch and some good Gascony wine from London. I told him that his son was growing well, but I did not tell him that I was sore afraid, that at times the darkness span in my head and roared in my ears, and made me forget what I had said or done.
Judith sent for the physician, who diagnosed an excess of heat in my brain. He squirted beet juice up my nostrils with a syringe to purge my head, a horrible process that left me coughing and streaming and gasping, and prescribed a diet of warm, moist foods to balance my humours. The chaplain urged me to private meditation and prayer, and I did try, but my mind kept wandering, and although Judith sat with me for many hours and read the Scriptures, nothing could distract me from the rushing in my head.
‘I saw Eliza again today,’ I told Judith as she was binding pieces of rose cake to my head. The sweet scent of the petals was cloying and the cake felt lumpy and uncomfortable at my temples but I submitted because it was churlish to reject the remedies she made so carefully for me.
Judith clicked her tongue in disapproval. ‘You should not speak to her,’ she chided me. ‘She will ill-wish you if you do not take care.’
‘I only wanted to know how she got into the house.’ I moved my head restlessly on the pillow.
‘Eliza has not been here,’ Judith said soothingly as she tied the last binding and stepped back. ‘Who would let her in?’
‘I don’t know, but she was here.’ I lowered my voice to a whisper, even though there were no servants nearby. ‘She left more hemlock for me, here in the chamber. I found it on the pillow this morning.’
It was the first thing I had seen when I woke that morning. A simple twist of paper, but at the sight of it I had felt ice pool in my belly, and pain jabbed in my head. I had to get out, to ride up onto the moors where I could breathe properly and where the darkly whirling thoughts would clear and settle. Up on the moors, I knew that I must act and not just scuttle away from Eliza in fear, so I had ridden down to the village to confront her in her cottage.
Inside, it was damp and dim, and the smoke hanging sullenly in the air stung my eyes. Eliza was hunched on a stool counting something – coins? – that she whisked out of sight when she saw me stooping in her doorway.
‘Good morrow to you, mistress,’ she said, and the slyness curdling her voice made my shoulders twitch. ‘What do you here?’
I could just make out the gleam of her eyes. A sour stench coiled into my nose and I was glad that I could not see what was trampled into the mud floor. Breathing through my nose, I demanded to know why she dared to come to my house, but Eliza whined and cringed and denied it again and again.
Judith frowned when she heard what I had done. ‘If it was not Eliza, then it must have been one of the servants. Where is the hemlock now? Did you throw it away?’
‘I put it in the box,’ I said, looking at the cedar box that sat on the chest. I struggled to sit up but Judith put a hand on my chest and pushed me gently back against the pillows. ‘Do you stay there. I will fetch it.’
I lay back and closed my eyes, and when I opened them Judith was standing with her back to me, looking into the box, her spine straight and very still.
‘You see?’ I said.
Slowly, Judith turned. She carried the box over to the bed and opened it. It was empty.
‘Someone must have taken it,’ I said, but my mouth was dry. A fear I didn’t want to name was drumming at the back of my mind.
‘Isabel.’ Judith’s voice was very gentle, her face creased with pity. ‘Isabel, do you think it is possible that you imagined it?’
The fear was beating harder, louder. I couldn’t hear anything above its pounding: mad, mad, mad. I shrank back against the pillows and stared up at my friend.
‘Judith,’ I whispered. ‘Help me.’
‘You have the headache, that is all,’ she said, squeezing my hand. ‘It is a cross that must be thankfully borne if it increases your devotion. This afternoon we will pray together, and if God wills, the pain will cease. But for now, I will bring you some posset ale and you may sleep for a while.’
She let go of my hand. Glancing at the table as she made to leave, she picked up the letter I had written to Edmund the day before. ‘Is this for your husband? Shall I send for the carter to take it to London?’
‘Bid him hurry,’ I said. I plucked at the coverlet. ‘How much longer will the Queen keep Edmund at court? I wish he could come home.’
‘It will not be long, surely,’ Judith said. ‘And you must be sure that you are well before he comes home, so rest you there, and I will fetch that ale.’
Chapter Thirty-one
‘Hey, buddy, remember me?’ Matt greets Felix with delight when he opens the door.
Felix obviously isn’t sure, but equally obviously doesn’t want to admit it, so Matt gives him a prompt. ‘Remember we made a movie at Askerby Hall last year?’
‘Yes . . .’ Felix’s face is pulled together with concentration. I can tell that he is longing to remember, really remember. I know the feeling.
‘And we gave you your own director’s chair with “Felix” written on the back?’
It is still in the nursery. Felix is on firmer ground now. ‘Yes!’ He nods importantly. ‘I remember.’
I wish
I could be reminded as easily.
Matt holds the door open wide. ‘Come in. I’m all set to have a go at making tea.’
It is a nice cottage, plain but warm and well equipped, and it has been recently refurbished so that it feels bright and new. The ground floor would fit into a corner of the long gallery, but the air feels lighter here. It doesn’t have that shadowy sheen that I have become almost used to at the Hall. The cottage is old, too, but it doesn’t have the same precarious atmosphere of secrets and shut doors, of feeling that an unwary step will send you tumbling through time. At the Hall, the wall between my life and Isabel’s is rubbed so thin that I can’t distinguish between the two and our memories muddle and merge, but sitting in the cottage kitchen I feel as if I have found an anchor to real life, a certainty to hold onto: here I can be Kate without Isabel’s memories clamouring urgently in my head.
Ever since finding the record of Judith being buried in the church as Edmund’s wife, I have been fretful and churning with anxiety. What if I have all this wrong? Memories are notoriously unreliable, Oliver Raine has told me that. Time and again, research has shown that the most vivid of memories bears little resemblance to reality. The brain picks pieces out of a kind of pick’n’mix selection box of memories and puts them together with a seasoning of invention and a hefty dollop of wishful thinking, he says. So even if I am willing to accept the fact that I am haunted by the spirit of a woman who has been dead for four centuries, there is no reason to suppose that her memories are truer than those of anybody else.
What if Judith was Edmund’s wife, and Isabel a servant, just like legend says? What if she was obsessed by her master, and I am remembering her dreams rather than her life? I gnaw at my thumb while I force myself to consider this. Perhaps Isabel had an affair with Edmund. Those memories of making love by the river might be true, while believing herself to be his wife was but a fantasy. Little pity was given to a serving girl who fell pregnant, even if the child was fathered by her master. Isabel might have faced the choice of being turned off to become a vagrant or of killing herself and her child. It would explain why she is buried ignominiously in the grounds of the estate instead of in the churchyard, as befitted Lady Vavasour.
House of Shadows Page 29