It was a beautiful day but in the dream I felt uneasy. There was a flutter in my chest as though time was running out.
I must be certain to leave word safely for Alison, I thought. Before it is too late.
White dust was rising along the track. Someone was coming. My heart leaped, and then plummeted again. Something was wrong. I felt it so strongly through the dream, that sense of growing dread and a fear that clawed at my throat. Standing outside of myself, I saw the box fall from my hand and open, scattering its contents across the grass—a coin, a carved wooden chess piece, a sprig of rosemary that smelled sweet and fresh.
I woke up suddenly, gasping for breath. The room was icy cold but I was drenched in sweat. I lay racked by shivers, trying to shake off that huge, smothering sense of horror, but it clung to me like cobwebs. Then Darrell:
‘Cat? What’s happened? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. A bad dream.’
I sensed his relief and the clumsy hug he sent me. It made me smile and eased the horror. Even so, the dread still lingered at the corners of my mind and I did not sleep again that night.
*
I had a new outfit that winter, less extravagant than Alison’s trousseau but still very fine. It was green velvet with gold and a matching hood trimmed with pearls. It was too big for me, though Liz said that I would grow into it fast enough. I had wanted to wear it for the first day of the hunting party but Liz had laughed and said it was not that sort of gown so I was obliged to wear my dull old crimson velvet instead.
Wolf Hall was in a positive fluster over so important an occasion, although I noticed that whilst Alison was supposed to be the focus of celebration, she, and indeed the rest of the women, seemed largely forgotten. Cousin Edward rode in with a whole host of cronies – men strutting like peacocks in their finery, attended by servants, surrounded by a cacophony of dogs and a host of hunting falcons.
I didn’t like hunting, but I sat a horse well enough and was given no option other than to join the party when they rode out in the frosty morning of the following day. There was to be a grand breakfast later, but as I shivered deep in my crimson velvet, I could think of many things I would prefer to do on a cold December morning.
The forest was full of pale light and misty glades that morning. At the back of the group the women hung back, chattering, but almost drowned out by the call of the horns and the baying of the dogs. The Queen was a keen hunter, as her mother had been before her, and many noble ladies enjoyed the chase, but none of us had the bloodlust on us that day. Early on, I caught a glimpse of a white hart and the dogs picked up the scent almost as fast. I willed it gone with all my strength and felt enormous relief when it disappeared into the mist. No one else was happy. The dogs sniffed around, running in disconsolate circles. The riders and the footmen grumbled as they waited for another scent. The excitement of the morning slowly fizzled into disappointment.
It was a subdued party that sat down to eat a couple of hours later, but the ale and the wine, the cold venison pies and the roasted chicken soon helped to assuage the bad mood. One of cousin Edward’s squires came to sit beside me, a merry fellow with laughing black eyes and a mop of black hair, who introduced himself as Harry Stapleton. I saw Alison watching me, as though to say, ‘I told you so’, but Liz was smiling on us benignly and after a little I forgot to be suspicious that Edward wanted to marry me off too because I liked Harry Stapleton. He made me laugh.
Suddenly it seemed everyone was laughing. The sun came out and the day felt almost warm. There was anticipation in the air again, and merriment. Alison had coaxed Dame Margery up onto her betrothal gift from Master Whitney—a highly bred white palfrey with a red and gold leather saddle. The horse had an uncertain temperament, like its master, but Alison was praising it lavishly, casting a glance at him under her eyelashes as she did so. Whitney was red and raucous from all the wine he had taken and put a clumsy arm around Alison’s waist. I heard his voice ring out:
‘I’d rather my own filly, even if she has already been had by other stallions first, than the old grey mare!’
There was a horrible silence, all talk, all laughter suspended. Someone tittered; a couple of Whitney’s men, as drunk as he, roared their approval of the jest. Alison had dropped the reins and stood looking pale and stricken. Whitney tried to kiss her again, but she turned her face aside and so he slapped her, the sound shockingly loud in the quiet. In the moment that followed I noticed several things at the same time. I saw Alison’s body jerk with the force of the blow; I saw Edward take a step forward, as if to intervene, his face a mirror of uncertainty. He stopped and did nothing. The sound of the slap echoed about the clearing, so loud it raised the birds from the trees.
To me it seemed as though the silence that followed lasted hours although it could only have been a moment. I knew with a horrible clarity what happened next; I had seen it before.
The palfrey bolted. I heard Dame Margery scream and saw her make a grab for the pommel, knuckles white. Everything happened very quickly then. The horse crashed across the clearing, sending food, wine, platters and flagons flying, knocking over one of the footmen who tried to catch the reins, trampling the skirts of one of the women who screamed like a fishwife.
There was a low branch blocking the path from the clearing. We all saw it. A number of us shouted a warning but it was too late. It hit Dame Margery across the throat and severed her head as neatly as any executioner.
The last thing I remember was seeing the white palfrey galloping away down the track with Dame Margery’s headless corpse still swaying in the saddle and her silver-trimmed cloak flying out behind, a horrible repetition of the vision I had had on the very first day I had come to Wolf Hall.
Chapter 6
Alison, Oldbourne, Wiltshire, the present day
Alison stopped the car and cut the engine, looking about her at the picture postcard neatness of the village green, the ducks on the pond, the tumbledown wall of the churchyard and the lichened gravestones beyond. This was not what she had expected when she had set out from London to visit Diana, her former counsellor. Diana had always seemed such a vibrant person, active and fizzing with energy. The setting of a quiet old village seemed far too staid for her.
Diana’s cottage was chocolate box perfect, set along a path beside a stream. A wooden gate gave access to a handkerchief-sized garden that in the summer Alison imagined would be filled with hollyhocks, sweet peas and old-fashioned roses. Now it looked straggly and neglected, dead leaves gathering in the cobwebbed hollows of the steps that led up to the door, bare stalks straggling over the whitewashed walls. Not even the cheerful black and white shutters that framed the leaded windows could add much zest to the scene.
Diana herself looked must the same as she had always done, elegant in black trousers and a black jumper, the severity of the outfit lifted by a brightly patterned scarf about her throat and a cluster of silver bracelets on the right wrist. Alison could detect little sign of the illness that was killing her until she leaned in to kiss Diana’s cheek and realised how brittle and hollowed-out she felt. Perhaps that was why Diana had settled here, Alison thought, with the quietness and the graveyard over the wall. Perhaps she had accepted her mortality and was simply waiting. The thought made her shudder. She almost wished that she had not come.
It had been a surprise to receive Diana’s email. Her message had been diffident, unlike her normal confident style as though she was stepping beyond the agreed parameters of their relationship. She had something to tell her, Diana said, something important. And so Alison had come.
‘How are you?’ she asked, holding out the bouquet of crimson roses, gerbera and rosehips that she had brought with her. She knew it was an empty question; Diana was dying and nothing could change that.
‘I’m doing fine,’ Diana said lightly. Her eyes lit up as she took in the flowers. ‘How beautiful! Thank you.’ She gestured Alison to a seat. The cottage had one long, open room with a huge inglenook fireplace at
one end where a fire burned, red and hot. The other end of the room had full-length doors that opened onto a small, enclosed courtyard. The ceiling was low, the timbers matching that of the huge beam across the top of the fireplace. Although it had been completely gentrified, Alison recognised it as the sort of labourer’s cottage that in her childhood would have had a dirt floor and held an entire family and their animals as well.
‘Oh dear.’ Diana was watching her face. ‘I should have thought. We could have met in a coffee shop somewhere.’
‘No.’ Alison pulled herself together. She had seen the tremor in Diana’s hand as she grasped the back of her chair and heard the catch of her breath as she lowered herself into it. She imagined it was difficult for Diana simply to move, or even to breathe. When they had last spoken, the tumour had been in danger of cracking Diana’s ribs and Alison could see that the colour in her cheeks was hectic rather than healthy. If ignorance was not always bliss, Alison thought, knowledge could be a curse. These days there was so much information available to everyone on any subject from particle physics to medicine. It was stark and graphic and so often it left no space for hope.
‘There’s coffee.’ Diana gestured towards a smart little cafetière in a flowered cosy that sat beside two flowered cups on a matching flowered tray. It was precisely the sort of chintzy design Alison usually hated but here it just made her feel sad, seeing Diana so determinedly cheerful amongst her flowery cups. Even though she had not seen Diana in three years, she had always felt like a constant in her life. It was Diana who had kept her sane in the days when she had first arrived, listening to her as she poured out her story, explaining to her that what she had experienced was bereavement, a loss of her old life. Alison remembered sitting in Diana’s room at Marlborough College, taking in the blandness of the beige chairs and the inoffensive pictures on the walls, a safe space, she supposed, for all manner of disclosures. It was unlikely though that Diana had ever heard anything like her story before.
‘I don’t want to be here,’ Alison had wept. ‘I’m trapped and I hate it. I want to go home.’
Even after the counselling was over and Alison had moved away, they had kept in touch sporadically, Alison sending cards and updating Diana on the things that were happening in her life, Diana always acknowledging her messages but never stepping over that boundary counsellors maintained with their clients. It wasn’t a friendship. Alison knew that. To start with it had hurt and angered her that Diana hadn’t wanted her as a friend. She knew and understood the reasons why counsellors maintained a distance, but that had not changed the sense of rejection she had felt. In the end though it was Diana’s integrity, a quality that had been absent more often than not in her own life, that had forced Alison into a grudging respect and from there to admiration.
They talked about Alison’s work for a while, the trip she was making to Namibia in the spring, the roof terrace she had created at her London flat, her friends, her plans for Christmas. The coffee was delicious and Diana produced some shortbread to go with it. Alison had already decided not to tell her about seeing the portrait of Mary. Diana wasn’t her counsellor any more and it felt like taking advantage. Even so, she was tempted. Their relationship had not been like this, the idle chat of acquaintances. She valued Diana’s opinion. On a more selfish level, she wanted to talk about it. However, it was Diana who had asked her to come and Diana who would tell her what she wanted in her own time.
‘I’m spending Christmas with my brother and his family,’ Diana said, pouring them a second cup. Alison watched her struggle a little to grasp the handle of the milk jug. She wanted to offer to help but she knew Diana would not welcome that.
‘They insisted,’ Diana said. A shadow crossed her face. ‘I’d rather be alone. It’s noisy, you know…’ She gave an apologetic smile. ‘Grandchildren. They’re lovely, but…’ Her voice trailed away. Alison could see the lines of fatigue on her face.
‘It’s tiring for you, I expect,’ Alison said. She hadn’t known anything about Diana’s family other than that she was divorced. An awful lot of counsellors seemed to be.
There were no photographs of family or friends in the cottage. It felt a little empty, as though Diana had already gone. Then there was the click of a cat flap opening and a very handsome marmalade and white cat strolled into the room. He stopped when he saw Alison, studied her for a moment with his striking green eyes and then jumped onto Diana’s lap purring extremely loudly.
‘This is Hector,’ Diana said. ‘I’m trying to find a home for him for after I’m dead and gone.’
Alison flinched inside at the matter-of-fact way in which Diana spoke. So few people referred to death openly. They skirted about the topic, as though speaking bluntly made it more likely to happen. She wondered when she had become so squeamish. Certainly it had not been in her childhood, when the sights and smells of death had been all around, bodies swinging from the gibbet, beggars rotting at the side of the road.
‘I’d have him myself but I don’t think he’d like London very much,’ she said.
Diana smiled. ‘I didn’t know you liked animals,’ she said. ‘You never mentioned them.’
‘The animals I knew were functional rather than pets,’ Alison said. ‘Especially the cats. They were there to keep the rats down. They worked for their keep.’
Hector looked at her again. She was sure there was contempt in his eyes, as though the thought of working for his keep was utterly anathema to him.
‘We’re much more sentimental these days,’ Diana said, stroking Hector’s head. Alison watched him close his eyes, luxuriating in the attention.
‘You like London,’ Diana added. It was not really a question but Alison nodded.
‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I’m never lonely there. In an odd way it feels familiar to me even though I had never been there and it has changed beyond recognition over the centuries.’
‘Only in appearance, I think,’ Diana said, ‘not intrinsically. It’s still a melting pot of different peoples and cultures, a place where fortunes can be made and lost, just as it has been for centuries.’
She looked up suddenly and Alison almost jumped. Diana’s blue gaze was as sharp and incisive as she remembered in the past with no shadow of illness or pain.
‘You might be wondering why I invited you here,’ Diana said.
‘I am,’ Alison said. ‘I wondered if—’ She stopped.
‘It was because I’m dying,’ Diana finished for her. She looked down at her hands resting in Hector’s thick ginger fur. She was frowning a little. ‘In a way I suppose it is,’ she said slowly. ‘Normally, as you know, I wouldn’t disclose anything personal to a client no matter how long I had known them.’ Her smiled took the impersonal edge off the words. ‘It’s the only way,’ she added, almost apologetically. ‘In the room it’s about you, not me.’
‘I understand,’ Alison said. She reached out; touched Diana’s hand. ‘I know I took it badly to start with when you wouldn’t tell me anything about yourself, but I do understand.’
Diana nodded. Her fingers clasped Alison’s briefly before she let her go. ‘A counsellor thinks about a lot of things when she is seeing a client,’ she said slowly. ‘Obviously, we’re supposed to be focusing on that person, but sometimes a discussion brings out our own feelings and emotions as well.’
‘Transference,’ Alison said. ‘I’ve read about it.’
‘I always found it difficult to talk to you about your son,’ Diana said. ‘About Arthur. I lost my son when I was in my twenties. He went to live with my ex. I wasn’t in a good place.’ Again she made that little dismissive gesture of the hand as though to brush it away. ‘It was better for him that he should live with Dan,’ she said quietly and Alison was not sure whether she believed it or was still trying to convince herself.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I never realised.’
‘I never told you.’ Diana’s words were abrupt. ‘It was my issue to solve, and I did solve it. I don’t think
it interfered with our work.’
‘No,’ Alison said. She had found so much comfort in telling Diana all about Arthur, pouring out her sense of fury, frustration and bereavement. It was not as simple as overcoming the grief of losing her son. She knew that would never happen. She could not forget him and she would always mourn his loss. With Diana’s help, though, she had at least learned to live with the pain from one day to the next, carrying it with her, feeling the sharp edges spike her every so often.
‘I shared some of that wrenching misery you felt,’ Diana said quietly. ‘It was different for me, though. There was always the chance I’d see Christopher again whereas you… You couldn’t find a way back to the past.’
‘No,’ Alison said. ‘I didn’t know how to go back and find Arthur.’ She had been very naïve, she thought, imagining that she could trip back and forth across time as easily as stepping through a doorway. That was exactly what had happened the first couple of times she had tried it, so she had assumed it would always be so. She would step into the hall at the White Hart Inn of the sixteenth century and out into Marlborough High Street in the present. So she had become complacent. Then one day, the day she had planned to go back to find Mary, to trace Arthur and bring him away with her, she had found the way blocked.
The White Hart had been redecorated. She had stepped inside from the High Street confidently expecting to see the old cobbled hall, full of smoke, and the sullen landlady stirring the pot: ‘Back again, are you?’
Instead there was modern wood furniture, a polished bar, big windows looking out onto a beer garden and the hum of quiet conversation as men downed their warm pints and looked at her curiously. Nothing changed. The vision did not falter and re-form into the past. She was rooted in the twenty-first century.
A woman walks into a pub…
There should have been a punchline. For her it was that she was trapped in the present when all her plans had been focused on the past. She had gold in her pocket to hire a cart to Wolf Hall—and to pay for the carter’s silence. She had plans, plans that caused the excitement to bubble up in her chest. She had found somewhere she could live, she and Arthur together. Mary would tell her where to find him and she would steal him away and take him somewhere no one would ever be able to find them.
The Phantom Tree Page 7