A Place of Secrets

by Rachel Hore

“No, just yourself. Tell Claire it would be lovely to see them another time.”

  What was up with Gran? Jude thought, and hoped fervently that Claire wouldn’t feel excluded.

  * * *

  “It’s … exquisite.” Jude held the necklace up so the evening light flashed on the row of gold stars studded with what looked like, but couldn’t be, diamonds. There were six of them. “Oh, what a shame, one’s missing.” A link was damaged at one end of the row, as though a seventh had been torn off.

  “Tamsin never knew when that happened,” Jessie said. “She told me it had always been like that.”

  “Seven for the seven stars in the sky,” Jude murmured, remembering the counting song her grandfather used to sing. The necklace was so dainty. “These aren’t real, are they, these stones? They must be zircons or something.”

  Gran looked outraged. “Of course they’re real. She told me they were. I knew I’d put it somewhere safe, but I couldn’t remember where. I hid it when that new plumber came, but it wasn’t in any of the usual drawers, so I’ve had a fine old turnout. I went through the pockets of my old coats, and that fake tin I keep in the cupboard—oh, all the places I’ve ever put it when I’ve had men in—then this morning when I woke up the answer fell into my mind. Next door had a burglary a few weeks ago, and I had a bit of a panic. I’d put it where no burglar would ever look.”

  Jude, trying to assimilate all of this, just smiled and shook her head.

  “Under the carpet in the spare room,” Gran said triumphantly. “In the corner, so there was no danger of anyone stepping on it.”

  Jude laughed. Despite this tale of confusion, Gran’s mind seemed sharper today. Perhaps it was remembering the challenge of outwitting all those poor, undoubtedly innocent tradesmen and the excitement of the find.

  “Is it something you inherited?” she asked, studying the five-pointed stars. One, she saw now, had a goldsmith’s mark on the back. It was gold, then, though the mark was very worn. It would take a specialist to make sense of it.

  “Oh no, it’s not mine at all. That’s the whole problem.” Jude stared curiously at her grandmother, who went on, “It belongs to the wild girl, you see. The girl I told you about. I’ve had it all these years.”

  Jude felt bewildered. “The wild girl? You mean Tamsin?”

  “Yes, I told you, I took something from her.”

  “But—a diamond necklace?”

  Gran’s expression hardened. She reached out her hand for the necklace and Jude gave it to her. “She left it behind, Jude. It didn’t seem like stealing at the time. We had a hiding place for it, you see, in the folly. And when she went away that last time and didn’t come back, I found it. I told myself I was looking after it for her. I’d have given it back if she’d come and asked for it, but she never did. It was so pretty. I had wanted it from the moment she first showed it to me. So I put it in a little box under the floorboards in my bedroom and kept it there. Not even my sister knew about it.”

  Jude thought of the refurbished floorboards in Gamekeeper’s Cottage. Gran’s hiding place would be gone now, nailed down and sanded. “I went there yesterday, Gran,” she said, carefully watching for the old lady’s reaction. “To your old home.”

  “There’s a young man lives there now,” said Gran. “I know about him. Claire’s told me.”

  “What did she say?” Jude asked, hoping to have some insight into what Claire thought of Euan, but Jessie was only thinking about her childhood home.

  “That he’s making something of the place.” Her expression was unhappy. It’s upsetting her, Jude realized. Of course it would, imagining her old home being torn up and rearranged to suit modern purposes.

  “But you’ve never been back there?”

  Gran shook her head. “Not since my parents died. I wouldn’t want to. Better to remember it how it was. They were happy times mostly, oh yes, and I like to think of those. Until…” She stopped. For a moment she toyed with the necklace, held it up to see once more how pretty it was. Then she reached out and, taking her granddaughter’s hand in hers, tipped the necklace into her palm. “Take it,” she said, closing Jude’s fingers over it. “I want you to find out what happened to Tamsin.”

  “Gran,” Jude said softly. “She would be so very old, and there’s no guarantee—”

  Jessie interrupted. “Yes, of course, she’s probably dead. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. But there’s a chance, isn’t there? And, anyway, she might have children.”

  “There’s a chance,” Jude agreed, though privately she believed it to be a slim one. And any children would be getting old themselves by now. “But I need to know more about her. What was her other name?”

  Gran thought for a moment then said, “Lovall. She must have been the same age as me, though she didn’t know exactly when her birthday was. She was in my class at Starbrough, I told you that. She was such a gentle person, and quiet, but in natural history she knew the names of the animals and flowers, but sometimes they weren’t the right names, they were the Romany ones.”

  A name, a school, and a rough date of birth—Gran had been born in 1923. That was all the information Jessie could give about a girl she’d met in a forest nearly eighty years ago. A Romany girl with no permanent address, who had probably changed her name on marriage and was more than likely dead now. Oh well.

  Jude wrapped the necklace in its tissue, and tucked the package safely in her bag. “I can’t promise anything, Gran, but I’ll try.” It was all she could offer, but the expression of relief in her grandmother’s eyes was reward enough.

  CHAPTER 16

  We’re halfway through July already, Jude realized on Monday morning as she wrote a note to accompany the poor, savaged final volume of the observation journal. She packed it up and drove to Holt, where she dispatched it at the post office to Cecelia, at her Barbican address. Then, since she’d arranged to meet Claire in her shop the following day, she browsed instead in some other antiques shops and galleries for an hour. There was a lovely watercolor seascape with boats, which she bought to give as a thank-you present to the Wickham family when she eventually left. In the bookshop, she found a copy of Euan’s new book. Then, walking back along the winding streets toward the car park, she noticed a small public library. “Discover the history of where you live,” a poster announced on the door. Deciding to do just that, she stepped inside.

  “Where’s your local section, please?” she asked a woman of about fifty who was pinning photographs onto a display.

  “Right this way,” the woman replied and took her over to the shelves. “Anything you were looking for in particular?”

  “Do you have anything on Starbrough village or Starbrough Hall?” Jude asked.

  “No specific book,” the librarian replied. “But there might be something in these ones about Norfolk and Holt.”

  “Thanks. I’ll root around, then,” Jude replied, flashing a smile, and the librarian returned to her display.

  Jude picked out the local volume of Pevsner’s architectural history and turned to the index. The reference to Starbrough Hall was cursory and there was no picture so she put it back. A history of the area, published in 1998, proved more helpful. There was a page and a half that expanded on the information she’d read in the Great Houses book in her office—namely, that the house dated back to 1720 when Edward Wickham, presumably Anthony’s grandfather, built it on the site of Starbrough Manor, which had been destroyed by fire ten years earlier, only two years after the disastrous fire of 1708 that devastated most of Holt. Edward, it seems, was originally a local man who had retired to the area having made a fortune as a merchant of the East India Company. “Edward’s grandson Anthony built the tower in 1769,” she read with a leap of sudden interest, but a great deal of the rest of the information she knew already.

  Its position, on a hill in the forest belonging to the house, was controversial, not least because it’s always believed to have been the site of a burial ground dating back to the p
re-Roman period. Unlike many other eighteenth-century follies, its purpose does not appear to have been merely decorative. References from Anthony Wickham’s own writing indicate that he used it to view the night sky.

  But then came something new.

  In the 1920s an attempt was made to excavate the area around the tower and some items of interest from various periods were found, including Celtic jewelry, and these now reside at the Castle Museum in Norwich. At the time of writing, the Hall and the woods around are still in the possession of the Wickham family, but the farmland was sold off in the early sixties.

  So there had been an archaeological dig, after all.

  She went over and asked the librarian, “You don’t have anything more about this excavation, do you?” She showed her the passage in the book.

  The woman spent a few minutes searching on a computer terminal before saying, “It looks as though we don’t, I’m afraid. Why don’t you contact the museum in Norwich? A friend of mine there would be a good person to try first. Her name is Megan Macromber.”

  “Thanks, I might do that,” Jude said, scribbling the name down in her notebook. It wasn’t an immediate priority, but it might come in handy to know what was dug up in the 1920s.

  * * *

  Returning to Starbrough Hall, she spent a quiet few hours in the library there, cataloging, then started in earnest the cumbersome job of transcribing Esther’s memoir. The section she’d already read was an easy job, but when she came to the next part it took longer, not least because she kept stopping to think about the story evolving beneath her hand. Esther’s voice, timid and formal at first, was growing in strength and confidence as she proceeded.

  For my eighth birthday my father sent me a hand-painted book of pictures of birds and flowers and animals of our kingdom. I passed many hours turning the pages, whispering the names to myself and wondering at the delicate colours. I showed it to Sam, who had taught me the country names of flowers, milksop and lords and ladies, how to tell a male from a female jay, but he shook his head over the Latin words in my book and declared them cold and dead.

  It was always as the sky turned from the deepest imaginable ultra marine to an exquisite indigo suffused with gold, out of which stars began to wink. This breathtaking moment when the secrets of the upturned bowl of the night sky began tantalizingly to reveal themselves, that Susan would summon me to bed. So on one of these evenings we planned the final details of our adventure.

  The chosen day was in the middle of August. I stole bread and cold ham from the larder while Mrs Godstone’s back was turned, wrapping it in oilcloth and hiding it in a crock in the coolest recesses of the dairy, lest hunger should strike us. At bedtime I stowed warm clothes under my pillow. After Susan blew out my candle and I heard the squeak her left boot always made as she retreated down the corridor, I got out of my bed and pulled on my dress and jacket, and played silently with my dolls in the near-darkness until the house quietened. Then I counted to sixty slowly, thirty times, to be certain. When I slipped out of my room, the door clicked shut behind me, and I waited to see that no one had heard before flitting down the stairs, through the kitchen and the dairy, where I rescued my package, and out through a window that I’d left secretly unlatched. Some of the ham I threw to the dogs to silence them. I listened to them snuffle about, their chains clinking in the dead air, then hastened across the cobbled yard and out into the park, where the sky spread out before me, the moon a glimmering slither amid the stars.

  Matt was waiting for me, hidden in the ha-ha as he’d promised. We walked together across the wide park and up the path through the woods feeling we were the only people left in the world. Gradually our eyes grew used to the darkness and we moved with confidence like other night creatures. Matt was certain of the route because he had consulted his father on the matter cleverly so as not to arouse his suspicion. ‘I pretended an interest in the orchids,’ was his explanation.

  The path through the trees was at first narrow and brambly, then, as they became more widely spaced—beech and oak and chestnut—our progress became easier. Yet my foreboding grew. With every step my chest tightened. I clung to Matt’s arm, unsure of the source of my fear.

  ‘Esther,’ he whispered. ‘Stop it, you’re hurting me.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ I managed to say.

  ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of.’ But he clung to me, too, and I could tell I was making him nervous. ‘Come on,’ he said, his voice turning to a squeak. ‘I think we’re nearly there. Father said … Oh!’

  Before us opened a clearing and in its centre moonlight fell on what appeared at first to be a gigantic tree thrusting upwards, taller than anything I’d ever seen. It was the folly: sinister, strange, fiercely alone. For a moment we could not move for awe, then Matt pulled at my arm and we stepped out of the shelter of the trees.

  When we spoke of it later, we knew it to have been only a bat, but to see our terror when the thing broke out of the darkness upon us, you might have believed it the devil himself. I cried out and ran blindly. ‘Essie, don’t,’ I heard Matt say, but I tripped and fell heavily, striking my head, and for a long moment knew only darkness and confusion, and Matt’s voice crying, ‘Wake up! Someone’s coming.’

  Then came a door banging and a man’s voice—surprised, angry—and Matt shouting, ‘Run, Essie,’ though clearly I could not.

  I felt a hand on my head, gently stroking my hair, and heard what I knew to be my father’s voice: ‘God dammit, it’s the child.’ I dared not move but felt his fingers search my wrist for a pulse, then he carefully rolled me over until my head rested in the crook of his arm. I opened my eyes and soon the shadowy contours of his countenance came into focus. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked and he must have heard my whispered nay, for he carefully raised me to my feet. But my head throbbed and I staggered, so he steadied me and after a moment I felt better.

  ‘Why in God’s name do they let you roam the country in the dead of night?’ he spoke, almost to himself. ‘Have they sent you with some message, perhaps?’ he asked. ‘Is someone ill, or worse?’

  ‘A message? No,’ I stuttered, bewildered, then remembered our ham, grateful for an excuse. ‘Though … I have supper for you.’ I rescued the oilskin package, now somewhat crushed. He looked at it puzzled, but pushed it into his pocket. I glanced round but of Matt there was no sign. I prayed that he was safe and reassured myself that he must have run off home.

  ‘Why would they send the child?’ my father said to himself, but I could see his concentration was wandering. He felt inside his coat, pulled out a fob watch and angled it until it caught enough light to read it by. ‘Come,’ he said, putting the timepiece away. He took my cold hand in his warm one, and led me towards the folly. Now I was with him, I was no longer afraid.

  ‘I’ll take you home, but first I have some measurements to procure.’

  He led me through the door at the base of the tower and immediately we were plunged into cold darkness. ‘Wait,’ he said, and his voice was curiously deep-timbred in that place. There came the scrape of flint and sparks flared into flame. I watched him light a small lantern and wondered at the waves of light and shadow lapping round the walls. A neat spiral of brick steps rose before us and he gestured to me to go first. So up I went, feeling my way on hands and knees, my fingers frozen with cold and fear. I climbed for what felt like for ever, then suddenly we emerged into a circular room with windows all about. There was a table by a wall, on which another lantern burned, and it was by the light of this that I first saw the world of this room in which I now sit.

  It was, I imagined at the time and do still, like a cabin in a great ship might be. It gave me also the sickening sensation I’d once felt when I climbed a great beech tree as a dare of Matt’s and felt it sway in the wind. A wooden ladder led up to the ceiling and a square of pale light. ‘Up once more,’ came my father’s voice behind me, and because I desired to impress him I overcame my reluctance and placed my hands on the ladder rail. ‘
I won’t let you fall,’ he said gently, sensing my fear, and so I climbed, glad of his shepherding presence behind.

  We came out onto a small brick platform, with a low parapet around it and a canopy overhead and there—oh wonder! He had rolled back the canvas to allow a telescope longer than a hay rake and thicker than a man’s thigh to point to the sky.

  “Sit,” he commanded, indicating a small bench, and I sank down thankfully on account of the swaying sensation and watched him arrange himself on a high stool and compose his features, as he grasped the spyglass and pressed it to his eye. Several minutes passed thus with him staring through the glass, and I peeped covertly about me all the while. Beyond the rim of the tower, the tops of trees sighed and tossed in the darkness, nor did they ever cease. An owl called, another answered. From a long way distant, a vixen barked, an ugly sound. There was a small table by my father’s side, on which were laid a large notebook, his pocket watch and some queer-shaped instruments and I watched him take one of these, hold it up to the sky and read aloud some figures from it. Then he scratched quickly in his book with a pen. This he repeated several times.

  ‘I’m done,’ he said finally, consulting his watch and dropping the pen back in its pot. He got off the stool, making to close the canopy. At this a great longing overwhelmed me.

  ‘Oh may I see first?’ I burst out, my shyness quite forgotten.

  He contemplated me, again with that puzzlement, then shrugged and said, ‘Why not?’ I had to stand on his stool while he held me by the waist. When I applied my eye to the glass, at first everything was blurred, and then my mind must have grasped the trick, because I saw a bright smudge of bluish light. The intimate face of a star. My cry was involuntary.

  ‘What do you see?’ my father asked and holding the scope steady he looked where I had looked. ‘Vega,’ he muttered. ‘One of the brightest stars in the sky. It’s part of Lyra.’

  ‘The magical lyre of Orpheus,’ I breathed. Miss Greengage had read us the story of Orpheus in the Underworld, searching for his beloved Eurydice.