‘I was born in about 1545,’ she said, ‘in Leicestershire. I don’t know my birth date for sure but my parents both died of plague when I was about eight years old. We were kin to the Seymours so I was sent to live at Wolf Hall.’ She looked down at her hands, entwined in her lap. ‘Everything I told you about my childhood was accurate,’ she said. ‘It was chaotic at Wolf Hall. We were a great sprawling family, who were tenuously linked and who depended on the patronage of our rich relatives to survive. Children came and went. When I was about eleven years old, Mary Seymour came to Wolf Hall.’
Adam shifted. ‘That would have been in 1555, when the Duchess of Suffolk fled abroad to escape the Marian persecutions.’ His tone was objective, the academic, neither believing nor disbelieving, simply weighing the evidence.
‘I suppose so,’ Alison said. ‘All I knew at the time was that I had to share a chamber with this little plain dab of a girl whose parents were so much more famous than mine. She had a gentlewoman who acted as governess, Elizabeth Aiglonby, who had been appointed by her mother, and her father was Thomas Seymour, of course, brother to the Lord Protector himself, of whose wit and charm and daring men spoke with admiration.’
‘But both brothers were dead by then,’ Adam said.
‘Yes,’ Alison said. ‘It was my cousin Edward who became Lord Seymour shortly after.’ She glanced at him. ‘I told you about him too.’
She saw Adam’s jaw harden. ‘He was the father of your child?’
‘Yes,’ Alison said again, ‘I was his mistress.’ She did not want to talk about Edward now. This was about Mary—and Arthur. And it was her story, for better or worse. Adam did not have to believe it. Very likely he would not, but at least the truth would be out between them at last.
‘I hated Mary Seymour at first,’ she said. ‘Children can be very cruel and I was vile. I had had no discipline, I suppose, and no example to follow. There was no kindness in me at all.’
‘You had had no love, I imagine,’ Adam said.
That got through Alison’s defences. She blinked back the tears that stung her eyes. She couldn’t answer.
‘Mary was strange,’ she said. ‘She was quiet and clever in some ways, naive in others. She was…’ she paused, searching for the right word ‘… otherworldly, somehow. She saw visions and talked to people who weren’t there. I thought she had the sight and could foretell the future.’
‘Did you think her a witch?’ Adam asked.
‘I didn’t believe in witches,’ Alison said. ‘But others did. That was how Mary came to be banished from Wolf Hall. They said she caused the death of one of Lord Seymour’s servants on a hunting party. I saw it happen. It was an accident but they blamed Mary. I think they would have hanged her for it, superstitious fools that they were, except that I blackmailed Edward into allowing us both to go away.’
For the first time, Adam smiled. ‘Oh, Alison,’ he said. ‘Yes, you would do something like that.’
‘I told you I wasn’t a nice person,’ Alison said.
‘You’d been badly treated,’ Adam said roughly. ‘You were barely more than a child.’
Alison fixed her gaze on the light streaming in through the high windows. Outside was the walled garden that stretched down to the river, with its herbs and its vines, its parterre and raised beds. She could imagine Hector patrolling his territory much as cats would have done down the centuries: mousers, house cats, pets. It all looked so normal and yet there stood the sand glass on the desk and here, once, had been the kitchens of the White Hart Inn, layer upon layer of history.
‘Edward was planning to marry me off once he was finished with me, but I had had enough of being told what to do,’ she said. ‘I knew about his marriage to Catherine Grey and I threatened to tell the Queen. Edward was a weak man,’ she added, thoughtfully, ‘but paradoxically a powerful one. He agreed to send Mary and me away if I kept quiet; but he would not tell me where.’
‘He sent Mary to Middlecote,’ Adam said, ‘but what happened to you?’
Alison hesitated. ‘I jumped out of the carriage in Marlborough and ran away,’ she said baldly. ‘I didn’t want Edward dictating my life any more.’
‘You ran a long way to escape him,’ Adam said dryly. ‘How did that happen?’
‘I had already found a way through to the future once before,’ Alison said. ‘I knew it was possible although I was not clear how it worked. But I was so desperate that I was prepared to risk everything for a better life. I made one mistake, though. I thought I would be able to come and go at will.’
She looked up and met Adam’s eyes for the first time, willing him to understand. ‘I was going to go back and find my baby,’ she said. ‘Once I knew what sort of place we were coming to, once I had had chance to prepare. I intended to find Arthur and bring him back with me.’ Her voice cracked. ‘But when I tried there was no going back. I was trapped in the present and Arthur… he was… lost to me.’
Her fingers were knotted together so tightly they were white.
‘You’ve been looking for him ever since,’ Adam said, and it was not a question.
‘I wanted to know what became of him,’ Alison said. ‘I had asked Mary to leave word for me if she could, but then I could not find trace of Mary let alone of Arthur. It never occurred to me that Mary would disappear. The daughter of a queen, lost from history. It seemed so unlikely.’
‘So when you saw the portrait in the window of the shop here you thought there was a chance that might be the clue you were looking for,’ Adam said. He shifted, turning slightly towards her.
‘It all happened by chance,’ Alison said. ‘Although it felt… meant… in some way.’
Adam let that go. ‘And what followed?’ he said a little grimly. ‘Did you deliberately get involved with me again in order to find out as much as you could about Mary and the box?’
‘Adam,’ Alison said helplessly.
‘Did you?’ Then as she did not answer: ‘Just tell me the truth, Alison.’
‘No,’ Alison said. ‘I love you. I loved you ten years ago and I still do. I just didn’t know how…’ She stopped.
I never knew how to make it work. I didn’t see how it could.
She did not know if Adam would believe her. She did not know if it would make a difference. The only thing she knew was that she had to be open with him now as she had not been in the past.
‘I won’t lie this time,’ she said. ‘I did want the box. You knew I did just as I knew you wanted to know more about Mary Seymour. That was always clear between us. But I wanted you as well.’
‘The difference between us,’ Adam said, ‘was that I was straight about needing to know the truth for the benefits of my research, whereas you made up some cock and bull story about a deathbed promise to your grandmother and your family tree.’ He sounded coldly angry.
‘All right,’ Alison said, holding on to her own temper by a thread, ‘yes I did. I did lie. Because what was the alternative, Adam?’ She threw out a hand. ‘If I had said, “I need to know this because I’m a time traveller from the sixteenth century, looking for my son,” you would have thought I was mad. Wouldn’t you?’ she added fiercely, when Adam said nothing. ‘You’re probably thinking that now anyway.’
She felt exhausted all of a sudden. From the very first with Adam, it had felt like an impenetrable mess. That was why she had pushed him away the first time, because she had not known how to deal with it. Nothing had changed. She was still utterly lost now.
‘I’d like to think that was the explanation,’ Adam agreed. He smiled, that lopsided smile that made her heart clench. ‘But that would be flying in the face of the evidence. And sometimes…’ He sighed. ‘Well, hell, sometimes you have to believe, not question.’
Hope flared in Alison. ‘You mean—’
Adam shook his head. ‘I need to think.’
‘I’m still the same person you always knew,’ Alison said.
‘That’s the trouble, Ali,’ Adam said, ‘I never did kno
w the real you.’ He stood up, looking around the office. ‘Besides, you’re still going back, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here. You’ve found a way somehow, something to do with this place, and you’re going back to find Arthur.’
‘It’s the hourglass,’ Alison said. ‘I only discovered recently that that was the key.’
‘The sands of time?’ Adam said. ‘That figures, I suppose.’ He stretched out his hand towards the sand clock, almost as though he might take it and smash it, then let his hand fall.
Alison remembered then where she had seen the image of the hourglass before, on Reginald De Morven’s tomb, and the Latin inscription that she had later discovered translated as ‘Grasp your time before it runs out.’
‘I have to try,’ she said. She stood up too, facing him. ‘This was what it was all about, Adam, from the very start.’
‘I know,’ Adam said. He sighed. ‘God damn it, this is beyond unreal. If the evidence didn’t fit the facts so beautifully I’d think I was dreaming.’
‘Welcome to my life,’ Alison said shakily.
Adam took her wrists and drew her towards him. His gaze searched her face. ‘How did you survive?’ he said wonderingly. ‘Jesus, Alison, how could you survive?’
Alison laughed shakily. ‘I’ll tell you one day, if I get the chance.’ She shook her head. ‘It was hard. It still is.’
‘Fuck,’ Adam said, ‘I don’t want this.’ He gave her wrists a little shake. ‘I want to walk away, but I can’t.’ He took her face in his hands and kissed her. ‘I’d never ask you to choose.’
‘Come with me,’ Alison said suddenly. She held on to him tightly. ‘Come back with me.’
She saw the excitement flare in Adam’s eyes, as the thought took hold, then just as swiftly the light there was doused.
‘I belong here,’ Adam said. ‘And no matter how fascinated I am with the past, I don’t believe in changing it.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ Alison said. ‘You wouldn’t need to do anything—’
‘You can’t know that,’ Adam said. ‘That’s why you should leave it too, Ali. You know enough now to find out what became of Arthur. You can find out his story. What are you planning to do—snatch him back? Bring him to the present, like you always planned to do?’ He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that, or it shouldn’t do. The hourglass is a blunt instrument—you said so yourself. You couldn’t get back to the time you wanted before. Why should it work now? What if you arrived at some other point in history? What then?’
‘I only want to see him,’ Alison said. The sheer aching loneliness at the heart of her, the loss that had not healed, felt as though it would consume her. ‘Just once.’
‘If that were true,’ Adam said, ‘it might be possible.’ He drew her carefully into his arms. They felt strong and sure. ‘It’s a dream you cling to,’ he added softly, his lips pressed to her hair. ‘Seeing Arthur once would never be enough. He’s your son and you would want to know him. You would want him to know you. It’s natural, but whatever you find will never be enough for you.’ He kissed her again and released her. ‘Good luck, Ali,’ he said. ‘I hope you find what you are looking for.’
He went out of the office, closing the door softly behind him. Alison waited. He did not come back and she did not know if what she felt was relief or regret.
It was time. She stood quite still in the centre of the office, looking around carefully at the battered old desk, the sagging cushions of the wing chair, the setting sun showing up all the dust and dirt on the windowpanes. She listened and heard nothing, waited and smelled nothing but the scent of old books and damp paper, saw nothing but the fading lines of stacked-up paintings. Then she took the hourglass in her hand.
Chapter 27
Alison, Middlecote, 1589
She knew at once that she was in the wrong place, in the wrong time. Adam had been right, of course. Time was not easy, pliable, an instrument to be bent to her will. Knowing where she wanted to be and when was not enough. The sand glass had a will of its own. Time was no easy medium to control. She felt instinctively that she was late, but how late: days, months, years? She had no notion.
What was familiar was the absolute silence, the absolute blackness, of the night, especially on a night like this when no stars shone. She had forgotten. There were no streetlights, no glow in the sky from distant towns and cities, no moving lights of aeroplanes or satellites, no car headlights breaking the blackness. As her eyes adjusted, she could see distantly the dark shape of a house crouching over to her right at the bottom of the hill. It looked familiar. With a jump of the heart, she realised why. She was standing at the stile at the top of the park where she had been only a few weeks before on her first visit to Middlecote, beneath the Phantom Tree.
There was no sound, no movement. Yet she was certain that she was being watched. The feeling sent a long shiver down her spine. In her past life her instincts had been sharper, but now they had been weakened by a world where survival was so much less dependent on one’s wits. She kept quite still, her heart racing, her thoughts tumbling over one another. This had been a mistake. She knew it now, now that it was real, now that it was too late. She was woefully ill equipped to survive. She had acted on instinct, full of impulse. Time had changed her beyond recognition. Had she truly believed she could find Arthur and tell him who he was, who she was? She felt as though she was waking from a long dream.
Movement caught her attention, then a faint noise and a light, which turned out to be the wavering glow of a lantern. The noise was incongruous, an insouciant whistling. It was the sound of a man without a care in the world. Alison drew back into the concealment of the trees.
In the lantern’s gleam she saw him and recognised him at once. He was holding the light in one hand and the horse’s reins carelessly in the other, a fine horse, coal black. Shadow hid half his face but the other was clear, the dark hair greying now, falling across his brow, the wickedly handsome face, older than in the portrait she had seen but still compelling, and the cruel line of the mouth.
Wild Will Fenner, thief, rogue, lecher, murderer…
Alison felt ice cold. Her fingers slipped to the knife in her pocket and clenched tight about the handle. It was all she had brought with her, along with a torch and some coin. Not that they would be much use with the head of a queen long in the future and a date four hundred and fifty years from now.
The whistling stopped. She saw Will Fenner come awake, his head tilting as he listened, poised like a hunting dog. Slowly, he turned towards her. He had sensed her presence.
Everything happened very fast then. A man stepped out from the trees on the other side of the path. There was a knife in his hand. The horse, nervous, highly bred, gave a squeal that was so loud and unearthly that Alison jumped. Will realised his danger a second too late. He swung around in the saddle to face this new threat and the horse shied, rearing up onto its hind legs and unseating him with one fierce movement that sent him tumbling beneath the descending hooves. His head hit the ground with a sickening thud.
The horse bolted. Will Fenner lay still, the lantern tumbled from his outstretched hand, his body lying disjointed like a broken puppet. There was blood, Alison noted numbly. She could not move. She wanted to run, but her limbs felt frozen. All she could think was that this had been the moment that had become the myth, the story that Adam had told her about. Will Fenner had not died through a child’s ghost taking its revenge but because of a man intent on murder.
The stranger came forward and knelt beside Will’s body. In the glow of the lantern his face was very still and grave. He turned Will’s head towards the light then let it fall back on the ground in a gesture that said more clearly than any words that Will was dead. Then he got to his feet and turned towards Alison again. He was very tall, fair with dark eyes, not young. None of them were young any more. The realisation jolted Alison. She remembered that Will Fenner had died in 1589. Had she stayed in the sixteenth century she would have been almost f
ifty years old by now, had she lived.
Thomas Fenner. She did not think she spoke aloud, but his gaze narrowed on her as though he had heard her, the lantern’s spark catching the darkness in his eyes and lighting it with flecks of gold. Alison studied him. This was the man she suspected had loved Mary Seymour, who had petitioned the Queen to restore Mary’s lands, not as Will had done, greedily seeking them as his, but, she suspected, for Mary alone.
‘Fate cheats us of our revenge.’ He spoke slowly, thoughtfully, as though he had recognised her too and assumed her mission there was the same as his.
‘Not so,’ Alison said. ‘Fate has saved you the trouble of killing him.’
The man nodded, standing up, wiping his hands on his jacket as though to rid them of the dead man’s touch. ‘A violent end to a violent life,’ he said. ‘I suppose in the end it is fitting.’
He was watching her as calmly and dispassionately as he had watched the death of his half-brother. This was a man, Alison thought, who had learned the measure of all things and did not rush to take action but was considered, thoughtful.
He inclined his head. ‘You are Mistress Alison Banestre,’ he said. ‘Mary Seymour spoke of you to me once. I recognise her description. Hair like the spun sunshine, she said, and an unquenchable spirit.’ He shifted a little. ‘I never thought to see you,’ he said. ‘I thought that you had gone, like me, to a different time.’
Understanding came to Alison in a blinding rush of sensation. ‘You too?’ She said. And then with a leap of hope: ‘And Mary?’
He shook his head slowly. His expression was unreadable. ‘Not Mary Seymour. She never left Middlecote.’
There was a silence. ‘What happened to her?’ Alison asked.
Again there was a long pause.
‘She vanished,’ Thomas said. ‘I never knew for sure what became of her.’ His gaze was distant. ‘She cried out for me but I was too late.’ His voice was gruff. ‘She was gone and I could not find her. Many times—so many times—I have looked for her.’
The Phantom Tree Page 30