I opened a drawer in the old desk and searched for the means to write it down, but there was nothing either to write with or on. If I were to leave word for Alison I would need to devise a different way, and the idea I had had before, of items that carried a double meaning, seemed the only way. I would use the box. It would be more durable, it would be safer and I would put it aside somewhere Alison and I both knew and set on it a prayer and a charm that she would one day find it. The minute I thought that I laughed, for the idea of me casting a charm was a foolish one. Once again, I had no notion how to do it.
First of all, I went to the chamber I shared with Thomas and emptied out the contents of Alison’s box. The ring from my father I put on a golden chain and hung about my neck. The other items—my mother’s pearls, the crucifix, the jewelled psalter—I set aside under the bed, wrapped in one of Thomas’s shirts that I had found. I had long before used the silver pins, the pomander and the ribbons that Alison had left behind, but I had kept the little drawing she had made of Wolf Hall all those years ago. It had been the place of our shared childhood. Looking at it now I felt a sudden pang of sadness and folded it up and replaced it in the box.
Then I set about collecting the clues for her. I took a sprig of rosemary from the overgrown herb patch so that she might know I had remembered her, and a silver penny from the year of Arthur’s birth. There was already a button in the box with the image of a shield with a bear on it. It had once belonged to Lady Fenner—her mother had been of the Baring family, whose device it was.
I found an old plate from a falcon that I found lying on the cobbles of the empty stables. I was pleased with that piece of cunning. Even if Arthur had not taken the Tercel name, it would tell Alison with which family he had been fostered. I thought long and hard about the name Harper’s Green. The green element was simple enough—I snipped a thread from my gown—but I had no harp, or any other musical instrument. What I did find, however, was a rotting, broken bow lying beside archery butts in the outhouse, so I took a string from that and hoped the meaning would be clear enough. I was not entirely satisfied with my choices but by now the late-afternoon sun was starting to pale and my stomach rumbled with hunger. I realised Thomas had been gone a long time, far longer than I would have expected. The first shaft of anxiety pierced me then and I ran to the gate, checking the lane in both directions but there was no one. Then I heard the sound of hoof beats and saw the cloud of dust rising on the track.
‘Thomas!’ I was so happy. My heart soared. Without a thought, I ran out into the road, the box still clutched tight in my hand. The horseman was getting closer now. I waved, screwing up my eyes to see through the dust and the fading winter light. He did not respond but still he came on.
Something was wrong. I sensed it before I saw that it was not Thomas who was coming but Will. A chill ran through my entire body. It was like the vision I had seen of Will approaching Middlecote Hall, his black cloak flying, the devil at his heels. I felt the same sick nausea and my vision started to blur until it was full of darkness. I turned and stumbled, wanting to run, needing only to reach the house and safety, but it was too late. He was beside me. I felt him lift me and, even as my mind screamed out for Thomas, I was carried off into the dark.
*
I awoke to light and warmth but also extreme discomfort. There was a pain in my head that felt as though my skull had been split in two with an axe. I was lying on my back, my hands bound behind me. I tried to open my eyes but could not. Shadows moved behind the closed lids; the buzz in my ears resolved itself into voices.
Will and Lady Fenner were talking about the box.
‘Put it in the aperture above the fire.’ Lady Fenner’s voice was sharp. ‘Quickly. Push it in as far as you can.’
I had forgotten that she knew the hiding place where I had kept my treasure. I had forgotten that she knew everything that went on this house.
‘Why can we not simply destroy it?’ Will sounded sulky and I heard her turn on him, snap.
‘Because we have already told everyone she has run away. It must appear so. She has run away and left her belongings behind.’
A faint trace of rosemary hung on the air. I tried to hold on to the scent, to bring clarity to the nightmare darkness in which I lay, but my mind felt as hazy as mist. I had been gathering clues for Alison, I thought. Rosemary for remembrance, a thread of green… My head ached sharply again and my mind drifted away.
‘Are you sure?’ I heard Lady Fenner speaking again. I tried to concentrate on her words. ‘Are you sure he was not there?’
‘I told you.’ Will sounded querulous in response. His mama could always reduce him to such childishness. ‘I searched everywhere. No one has seen him.’
‘You saw him yourself,’ Lady Fenner said.
‘That was weeks ago.’ Will was impatient. ‘He’s gone again, I tell you. Like he always does, a will-o’-the-wisp. He has nothing to do with this.’
They were talking about Thomas. Through the pain in my head I tried to reach out to him.
Thomas…
Nothing. No returning echo of emotion, no response.
‘I still think he is involved in some manner.’ Lady Fenner had turned towards me now. I lay very still. ‘You said Eleanor had been telling her about him,’ she continued. ‘What if she ran to him, with all she knows? What then?’
Their words and the pain in my head and the jumble of my thoughts were interfering with my attempts to reach out to Thomas. Each time I tried I felt nothing. Yet I could not give up. I kept trying to shape my thoughts, drawing strength from the thought of him, the memory of love. It sharpened my determination.
Will walked over to the bed. I sensed it, caught the movement and smelled his odour of stale sweat and soap. Then I felt him touch my cheek, running a finger over the curve of it. I wanted to shrink from that touch but forced myself not to move.
His hand fell lower, slipping beneath the gold chain where my father’s ring lay between my breasts. He drew it out. I felt the chain snap.
‘My little brother always takes from me what I want the most,’ he said and a shudder ran through my blood at his tone.
‘There’s no time for your whoring now,’ Lady Fenner said sharply. ‘She has to go. You do see that? She knows too much.’
Will turned away abruptly. ‘I do not see that, no.’
I heard Lady Fenner sigh. ‘Yes you do. It is your fault—you were the one who involved her in your crimes. Besides, she saw what happened that night, with the babe.’
‘And she said nothing.’
It was Will who was defending me, Will who was trying to save my life, but at what price? I did not want to think on it. Nor did I want to think about the fact that in our happiness together neither Thomas nor I had spoken of Will at all. I had not told Thomas what I knew and now it was too late.
Thomas…
At last there was the faintest tremor of a response. I felt it.
Mary…
He was a long way away. I knew at once. He was separated from me not in distance but in time. I felt his anguish, and it met my own like a tide, rolling over me, dark and deep, full of love and despair.
Mary…
He was not coming for me. He could not. I saw my dream again, the men fighting in the forest, father against son, brother against brother, a time past and a time still to come. Thomas had been there, I thought. Like Alison, he had found a way through the different layers of time. That was how he had known to warn me of the danger that day I had seen the soldiers in the forest when I was still a child.
‘There will always be the chance that she will speak out.’ It was Lady Fenner’s voice. She sounded implacable. ‘Do you not see, William? We may count her as nothing but others will not dismiss her so easily. She is a Seymour. That is the one thing they cannot take from her. If she were to talk then I doubt even Hopton could save you.’ She was coming towards me as she spoke. Though I kept my eyes tight shut I could feel it. Lady Fenner, always the driving for
ce, always stronger than her son. Why had I not understood sooner? I had known she was dangerous to me, yet still I had been careless, too slow to realise that when I was of no further use to her she would snuff me out as easily as she had taken the life of the child. I could see the vision now, through that closed door, now that it was too late. Will had had blood on his hands that night, but he had not been the one to throw baby on the fire. His mother, always more ruthless than he, had seen the threat and destroyed it.
In a blinding flash of clarity, I understood. That was why the one thing Lady Fenner feared was Thomas. She could not control him. She could not even find him. Thomas was her nemesis. In one manner or another he would bring them all down.
There was one last thing I had to do. The charm. It was the final thing I could do for Alison. I thought of the box in its resting place above the fire and I prayed.
My head hurt so badly. I sensed a flutter of love through my mind, soft and gentle. Thomas was with me. I had thought the end would be fierce but it was so mild. A weight pressed down. I could not breathe and then all was dark.
Chapter 26
Alison stood outside the art gallery on Marlborough High Street. Two weeks before Christmas and the streets were packed, shops open even though it was a Sunday, pavements full of people searching in a rather harassed fashion for last minute presents. It was the perfect time to stage a break-in because no one was paying any attention. Not that she was breaking in. Not really. She had taken Adam’s key. He didn’t know, so technically she had stolen it, but she really did not want to think about that now. She could not think about Adam or she would start to question herself. She would falter and then she would fail when most she needed to be brave.
She put the key into the lock. The gallery was closed, all the lights out, the pictures in shadow. Adam had said that Richard was away that weekend visiting friends in the run-up to Christmas. She hoped, belatedly, that there wasn’t a burglar alarm. There ought to be in a place like this and yet she could not see one. Carefully, she closed the door behind her and made sure that the latch was dropped.
She picked her way cautiously through the displays. The office door was shut and suddenly she wondered if it was also locked. She should have thought of that. There were so many things she should have considered and prepared for, instead of this headlong flight into the past, but she felt desperate now, so close to her heart’s desire, within touching distance. And she also knew that if she did not go now she would never go at all.
She did not know how she had got through the past week with Adam. It had all been a pretence, each day more painful than the one before, because she had known she was going to go and she had laid her plans, and Adam had known nothing. He had thought she was happy; they had agreed to go to Harper’s Green the following weekend and in the meantime he had promised to try to find some information on Arthur Tercel for her to help with her family history research. Her grandmother would have been so pleased, he had said. He hoped it helped her to feel more connected to the family she had lost. Alison had felt wretched. That morning he had headed off to the British Library and she had come here.
Her hand was on the office doorknob when she heard the sharp rapping on the outer door. Turning, she saw Adam on the pavement outside, one hand pressed against the glass to shade his eyes so he could see inside, the other beating against the wooden panels.
‘Alison! Open the door!’
She froze. How had he known where to find her? Why was he here? The doorknob turned in her hand and the office door opened a crack. She almost turned her back on Adam then. It would be so easy to slip through. She was so close. But when she had planned on leaving him behind she had not planned on this. She had not realised how difficult it would be to look into his face, to hear his voice, and then to walk away.
She hesitated. In front of her the office was shrouded in darkness. She could see the desk, the window seat where she had sat that day she had delivered Hector. Paper cascaded from a tray onto the desk and from there to the floor. It stirred in the draught from the open door.
The hourglass was on the bookcase directly in front of her. If she reached out a hand she could take it. She could at last step back into the past…
‘Alison!’
Adam again. She stopped.
She could not go. Not yet.
She shut the door and turned back. Adam was still standing outside, a piece of paper in one hand, the other still resting on the doorframe. As though in a trance she walked slowly back through the gallery and opened the door, and he came inside and closed it behind them. The sudden silence seemed loud.
‘I took your key,’ Alison said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I know,’ Adam said. ‘That’s how I knew where to find you.’
He was staring at her, and from her to the blank panels of the office door. There was anger and bewilderment in his eyes and suddenly she could feel again, with raw intensity. The sensation of grief burst through the cold determination she had cloaked herself with and pierced her to the heart. She had loved Adam. She had loved him ten years ago and she loved him now. Yet she had deceived him and stolen from him and crushed everything that was between them in her single-minded quest to find Arthur. It was as though she had seen nothing else, had valued nothing else.
‘You were going back,’ Adam said.
That stopped her. She had no idea how he could have guessed.
‘I…’
‘Don’t bother to deny it,’ Adam said.
‘No,’ Alison said, ‘I won’t.’ Then: ‘I am sorry. Truly—’
‘Save it,’ Adam said. He was still staring at her as though she was a complete stranger to him, which perhaps she was. ‘So it is true,’ he muttered. He ran a hand over his face. ‘Shit. I thought I was imagining things.’
‘Understandably,’ Alison said. ‘But how did you know?’
Adam blinked. He seemed to recall the piece of paper in his hand. ‘This,’ he said. He came to stand next to her and snapped on one of the spotlights, holding the paper out to her. It was small and faded almost to the point of being illegible. There was a grid pattern to it. Alison could see the lines on it made by the wire. When she had been young paper like this had been her greatest luxury and she had used it with her charcoal, drawing and rubbing out, designing and painting… With a gasp she jerked back, for she too had recognised the picture now. Tiny, pale, worn, it was a miniature version of the painting on the wall of her flat, Wolf Hall, all sloping roofs and jumbled gables, with the wood at its back and the gate that led to the fields.
She looked at him.
‘It was in the wooden box with the other items that Mary left,’ Adam said. ‘It was on the list I gave you as a drawing, subject unknown.’ He took it back from her. Their fingers brushed. Alison swallowed hard, blocking out the warmth of the human connection. Too late now…
‘I arranged to have it dated,’ Adam said. ‘The test results came through this morning.’ He was watching her almost clinically now. The anger had gone to be replaced by something more distant, something cold. ‘It’s sixteenth-century laid paper made from linen pulp spread on a wire grid,’ he said. ‘But I think you know that, don’t you, Alison? You drew the version that is on the wall of your flat. You told me so.’ He dragged a hand through his hair. ‘Somehow you drew an identical picture to this one.’
‘Yes,’ Alison said, ‘I did.’
‘This is Wolf Hall!’ Adam said, explosively. He took three steps away then turned sharply back to face her, as though he could not repress all the pent-up emotion inside. ‘It fits the physical descriptions,’ he said, ‘even though there are no paintings of the original house—and, of course, it was demolished many years ago.’
Alison swallowed hard. He had not guessed, then. He had worked it out logically, based on the evidence. That, she thought, with a rush of love and utter misery, was totally Adam.
‘My conclusion,’ Adam finished softly, as though reading her thoughts, ‘impossible as it is to
believe, is that either you had seen the original before—’ he brandished the little sheet of paper at her ‘—or you drew it. You drew both of them.’ Then, whilst she groped for an answer: ‘Tell me. Tell me I’m right. Because otherwise I’m mad, which I may be anyway.’
‘You’re right,’ Alison said. She took a shaky breath in. ‘I drew it. Mostly I stole the paper for my drawings because it was so expensive. I stole a lot in those days.’
‘You still have the talent,’ Adam said dryly, and she felt a little sick.
‘AB,’ he added. ‘AB for Alison Bannister—or Banestre. The whole bloody thing makes perfect sense when you suspend disbelief and look at it from a different perspective. The box was yours all along and you wanted it back.’
‘I needed to find it,’ Alison corrected him. She reached out a tentative hand. ‘Adam—’
Adam took a step back, the movement rejecting her more clearly than words could ever have done.
‘Okay,’ Alison said. ‘Let me explain?’
‘This should be good,’ Adam said. ‘Shall we sit down?’ He gestured towards the office door, opening it and stepping back to allow her to precede him inside. The room looked exactly the same as normal. Adam switched on the light and it gave the place a dusty glow. Alison took the window seat as she had with Richard whilst Adam moved a pile of books off the armchair and sat opposite her.
‘Go on then,’ he said.
He wasn’t making it easy for her but then there was no reason why he should. This was not simply a case of what seemed on the surface to be a mad fantasy; there had been deceit on her part at every step. Adam had believed she had told him the truth that night at the flat when she had spoken about her past and it had been true as far as it went. He had trusted her, opened up to her, given them a second chance, only to discover that the biggest secret of all she had kept from him.
She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. She wasn’t going to beg him to understand or to ask him to forgive her. There was no point now in asking him if he would have believed her had she told him. She would give him the facts and let him make of then what he willed.
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