“You’re cancelling our two weeks in France to take Lillian to hospital?” she hissed, furious and devastated that Jacqui still took priority in Warren’s life. “Where?”
“It’s a specialist team in Edinburgh,” he said. “It’s for her back.”
“Why Edinburgh? They live in Yorkshire?”
“I don’t know, darling, but you know Jacqui can’t drive since she had her horse riding accident…”
“So, you’re dropping me, your fiancée, to run to your ex-wife’s side? While it’s very gallant of you, it’s extremely unreasonable. Tell you what, I’ll charter a plane to fly them there, pay for Jacqui to stay in a five-star hotel, hire a driver to ferry them around, then fly them home,” she seethed. “Now you don’t have any excuses. Unless, of course, you’d rather be with her than me?”
“Perdita, you’re being ridiculous and unfair…”
“I’m being unfair?” Her control was fast disappearing but she fought hard to keep her voice calm, if colder than usual. Her instinct was to explode, to scream and shout then dramatically hang up; experience had taught her this would leave her feeling worse. “I’ve offered to fund their trip in order to leave you free to be with me. How is that unfair?”
“You’re making an already difficult situation worse by being deliberately awkward,” Warren shouted, unexpectedly losing control. “I can’t speak to you when you’re like this. The holiday is off, Perdita. Stay where you are in Pembrokeshire.”
Then he hung up.
Stunned, Perdita stared at her phone. What had just happened? How could he do this to her? It had been his suggestion they spend a fortnight together at his house in the south of France, now it seemed he would prefer to ferry his ex-wife and her mother around instead. Perdita’s finger was poised to return the call, then she hesitated. A feeling of sick devastation was slowly sweeping through her as a sudden, horrifying thought filled her mind. He was trying to make another go of his marriage. With shaking hands, Perdita placed her phone on the seat beside her and took several deep breaths.
Calm, she thought, rationalise the situation.
She gazed out of the window, trying to stem her welling tears and marshal her frantic thoughts. This was a row, she thought, nothing more. Yet she could not quite ignore the voice in her head that reminded her this was not the first time Warren had cancelled their plans in order to help his ex-wife. Somehow, she had always managed to justify his behaviour but this — she was not sure this was forgivable. If he had delayed the holiday a few days, she would have understood but to cancel it entirely and insist she remain in Pembrokeshire… It made her shudder.
Outside, the beautiful summer morning seemed to mock her misery. She allowed herself to be overwhelmed by her disappointment and confusion for a few moments, but then gradually, with the stubborn self-preservation instincts of one who had learned to face unexpected and debilitating loss, she pulled herself back from the brink. Warren had crossed a line and she was unsure how to react. She would not call him today. She would calm down, distract herself and keep busy until she was ready to discuss how they could overcome the recurring issue of Warren’s ex-wife’s interference in their lives. And if we can’t? she thought. Well, I’ll face that if I have to.
Clicking off her phone, she walked over to the desk where she had left her laptop and snapped it shut. Placing the ornate book next to it, she ran a hand through her hair, thinking hard. Warren, she decided, was not going to ruin her day. She had other things to occupy her mind, issues she felt were more important than allowing herself to be upset by his behaviour. She knew Jenny was busy until later in the afternoon, therefore, until she could access the other documents, she would head to the research centre with the ornate copy of The Llyn Cel Mermaid and Other Local Legends and see if this version had anything to offer.
If she finished studying this before Jenny arrived, she would begin checking the hundreds of references in her grandmother’s manuscript in order to establish whether at least part of her argument was corroborated by other sources. It was a good plan and as she wandered into the Tudor hall, she was so lost in thought, she did not realise she had forgotten her laptop, phone and book, neither did she notice Kit until she walked into him.
“Morning, you’re distracted,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders to steady her, then he saw her ashen face. “Hey, what’s happened?”
“Nothing,” she replied. Then, despite her best intentions, she wavered. “It’s Warren, he’s cancelled our holiday, we argued.”
“Oh, Perds, no. Why?”
“His ex-wife,” she managed before a sob engulfed her and she turned away, not wanting him to witness her distress. She did not see the fury that passed across Kit’s face. To her surprise, he pulled her into an all-encompassing hug, her back to his chest, his head resting on hers in a gesture of comfort.
“Men are idiots,” he murmured into her hair. “I bet he rings back this afternoon and apologises, then begs you to fly out to join him as planned.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“What are you up to now?” asked Kit.
“I was going to head over to the research centre to begin checking references.”
“Really?”
“Yes, why?”
“Do you honestly think you’ll be able to concentrate? Give it five minutes and you’ll be brooding over your row.”
She stared at him, aware he was correct but not wanting to admit to such shallowness.
“I’m popping out for an hour or so,” continued Kit. “Errands for Dad and a few other bits and pieces. I’m heading for the Pembrokeshire Archives in Haverfordwest. They’re having an exhibition and we’ve agreed to lend them a few pieces. Why don’t you come along for the ride? It might help clear your head.”
Perdita opened her mouth to refuse.
“I’ll buy you lunch,” said Kit as she hesitated, his blue eyes twinkling. Perdita gazed into his smiling face and suddenly nodded decisively. Perhaps it would do her good to get out of the house for a few hours.
“Let me grab my bag,” she said.
Twenty minutes later, she was in the passenger seat of Kit’s car as they headed towards the nearby market town but, hard as she tried not to think about it, her mind kept replaying the row with Warren. She could not quite shift the fear that he was trying to get back together with Jacqui. It was a gut instinct and, for the first time since she and Warren had become engaged, she wondered if their relationship was as strong as she had always assumed.
“Incidentally,” said Kit, interrupting the string of imagined responses Perdita was running through in her mind, wishing she had flung a few of them at Warren, “I’m surprised you haven’t said, ‘I told you so’.”
“About what?” she asked.
“Your grandmother’s manuscript, The Catherine Howard Anomaly. You obviously think there’s something worth investigating,” he said, slowing down and edging into a hedge to let a tractor pass, “or you wouldn’t be compiling her bibliography and checking her references.”
“On any other day, I’d definitely enjoy the smug factor,” she admitted. “Today, everything is slightly muted but yes, I told you so. I want to do some more research to discover the reason why she didn’t go ahead and publish, because my grandmother’s theories are quite extraordinary.”
“In what way?”
Perdita dragged her mind away from Warren. “How much do you know about Catherine Howard?”
“Not much,” he said. “She was young and I think she was beheaded. If memory serves me correctly, she’s always been viewed as a bit of a foolish, good-time girl who had a number of flings. Was she Henry VIII’s fourth wife?”
“Fifth,” corrected Perdita. “She came after Anne of Cleves.”
“And Anne was the queen Henry divorced because he didn’t think she was very pretty?”
Perdita’s expression darkened. “Which I always thought was a bit rich when you think what an enormous, festering tub of guts Henry was
by then.”
“Go on, girl, get that bitterness and fury out!” Kit laughed.
Despite herself, Perdita giggled.
“Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived,” chanted Kit.
“That’s right,” said Perdita. “Katherine of Aragon was his first and longest-standing wife, as well as mother to the future Mary I. She was a Spanish princess and was previously married to Henry’s older brother.”
“Prince Arthur,” agreed Kit, “and it was on the basis that their marriage was adulterous because she had been his sister-in-law, that Henry divorced her to marry Anne Boleyn.”
“Gold star, go to the top of the class,” said Perdita.
“I knew my history A-level would come in handy one day.”
“Henry married Anne Boleyn and she gave birth to the future Elizabeth I. Things went wrong, though, when she miscarried several times and was unable to produce the male heir Henry required to continue the dynasty. So, Henry trumped-up some charges of adultery and had Anne beheaded.”
“Nice guy. Jane Seymour was next, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, she gave Henry his longed-for son, the future boy-king, Edward VI, but she died shortly after the birth, probably from puerperal fever but it could have been an infection due to lack of hygiene,” said Perdita. Then, as Kit flew around the corner, the rugged Pembrokeshire cliffs and wild blue sea filled their view. She gasped, “Wow! Stunning!”
“Hey, it’s good to see you smiling.”
“Thanks, Kit,” she said. He gave her a small salute then returned to the Tudors.
“Wasn’t Jane Seymour supposed to be the love of his life, because it wasn’t until a couple of years later that he married Anne of Cleves?”
“Well, school history lessons said so but that was the version of the past written by male, mostly Victorian, scholars.”
“I take it new information has been found then?”
“It depends on your interpretation,” replied Perdita. “Henry was buried next to Jane in St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle which was another reason why the myth perpetuated, but I’m not sure it was necessarily his choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Henry died, Edward VI became king but he was only nine years old, so his uncle, Edward Seymour, became regent,” she explained. “Edward Seymour was Jane’s eldest brother and what better way to cement the family’s power than by claiming Jane had been Henry’s favourite wife? It would have reinforced what the Seymour family saw as their right to rule. I’m not saying Henry didn’t care about her but that was probably because she gave him a living male heir. In reality, Jane died on 24 October 1537 and on 31 October, seven days later, Thomas Cromwell was already lining up new brides. His first two suggestions were the French king’s daughter Margaret or the widowed Madame de Longueville. Margaret was the seventh child of Francis I and Queen Claude and was fourteen years old. Henry was forty-six.”
“Gross,” muttered Kit.
“Exactly. Madame de Longueville is probably better remembered as Mary of Guise. She refused Henry, preferring to marry his nephew, James V of Scotland.”
“Wise woman.”
“And she was the mother of the future Mary Queen of Scots.”
“I knew I’d heard the name,” said Kit. “She had a lucky escape.”
“As did many other royal women and ladies of high breeding,” said Perdita. “The reason there was such a long gap between Henry’s third and fourth marriages was because it took that long to find someone who was willing to wed an axe-wielding maniac. Although, he had a number of mistresses in between.”
“And then, after Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard flared briefly on the pages of history.”
“Yes, poor little Catherine Howard and finally Katheryn Parr.”
“You said your grandmother had discovered something extraordinary?”
“If Granny was right, then what she proposes could change a lot of preconceived ideas about the Tudors, but in order to see if there’s a possibility of publishing her findings, I need to do a great deal more research. I’ll also have to corroborate her findings properly and authenticate the documents she used, particularly one she named The Catherine Howard Codex which was her main source of new information,” she said. “I’d hoped you might be able to help; you must have to verify your discoveries all the time.”
Kit nodded. “There is another possibility though, Perds,” he said. “Please don’t think I doubt you or Mary but, as she was such an experienced and gifted historian, do you think it’s possible she discovered the codex was a fake and that’s the reason she didn’t publish?”
“I’m aware that might be the reason. The thing is, though, she must have thought there was something in it because she kept adding things to the manuscript, right up until just before she died.”
“Such as?”
“New discoveries about Henry VIII, new findings on Catherine Howard, all sorts of bits and pieces, and every one of them backs up what she discovered in the codex. So, she did have some corroborative evidence, although it needs pulling together in a coherent manner. It was as though she never fully stopped building up the proof she required. Even more intriguing is that the final chapter is missing, so I wonder if she’d removed it because she wanted to rewrite it. The last update in the file was two weeks before she died. Don’t you think it’s at least worth investigating? And, if it turns out to be a fake, well, then you can have your ‘I told you so’ moment!”
“OK,” he said, smiling. “Let’s try. We’ll speak to Jenny when we get back and take it to The Dairy for authentication.”
She was still unsure whether all her grandmother had discovered was true or merely an elaborate conspiracy theory, but she had to find out. And, she realised, it’s made me feel calmer and more in control of my emotions about Warren. I’m sure we’ll work things out. Her mind drifted back to the day he had arrived to break the sad news about her grandmother: surely he would not have dropped everything to race to her side if he didn’t love her? He did love her and she loved him, she was sure of it. We’ll find a way, she thought, then her mind drifted back to the dig.
“By the way, who do I speak to about grants?” she asked, remembering her promise to Olaf.
“Grants? Perds, you don’t need funding,” laughed Kit.
“Not for me, for the dig I was on when Mary died. They invited me to take part because I specialise in jewellery and its symbolism. We found a golden cup with a clockwork mechanism inside it and I wondered if it would be possible to offer Olaf a grant to restore it and maybe commission a replica? I wondered if Piper would be able to help him find a suitable artist to take on the work.”
“No problem. We part-funded that dig so I’ll have all the details, I’ll contact Dr Dade. And what about you? Will you be going back to your university job?”
“Not a chance,” she said as they pulled into the car park of the archives. “I’m having far too much fun here. I resigned yesterday.”
Chapter Two
The trip out was exactly what I needed, she thought later that afternoon as she strode across the lawn to the research centre. Warren might have dented her morale but Kit had worked hard to restore it. After making the necessary deliveries and errands, he had taken her on a whistle-stop tour of the surrounding historical monuments.
“You can’t move around here without tripping over a castle or a ruined ecclesiastical building,” he had said. “There’s Haverfordwest Castle, which was established in Norman times, approximately 1120, then there are the ruins of Haverfordwest Priory which was a house of Augustinian Canons until Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. After that, the land was bought by Roger and Thomas Barlow, who were the brothers of William Barlow, the bishop of St Davids.”
“Useful contact,” Perdita had laughed.
“Indeed! We’ll go over to Pembroke for lunch, then you can see Pembroke Castle where Henry VII was born. Not far from there is Carew Castle which was once home to th
e Perrot family and between the two are the ruins of Lamphey Bishop’s Palace, which was also bought after the dissolution, this time by the Devereux family. There’s Picton Castle too and the ruins of Wiston Castle, not to mention St David’s Cathedral itself…”
On their return, Kit had disappeared to his own office to prepare for his weekly meeting with his father and Perdita felt that at last she could begin unravelling the mystery of why her grandmother had withdrawn the manuscript from publication. As she opened the door to the research centre, her phone rang. Fishing it out of her handbag, she saw Warren’s name flashing on the screen. For a few moments, she considered her options, then rejected the call. She did not want him disrupting her mood again, she would speak to him later. As she made her way through to The Dairy, she waited for him to leave a message. When he did not, her anger surged. Pushing her phone to the bottom of her bag, she marched resolutely onwards to Jenny’s office.
“Jenny!” exclaimed Perdita when she found her. “This place is amazing! Most universities would kill for this facility.”
Perdita had briefly toured The Dairy before, but had not fully absorbed the scale of it. Now, as she followed Jenny through the corridors, she was awestruck by the state-of-the-art research opportunities it offered.
“I’ve set us up in the room Mary always used,” said Jenny. “Your laptop is already there and, I hope you don’t mind, I’ve charged it. The copy of The Llyn Cel Mermaid and Other Legends that you’d taken off the shelf is there too. I assumed you still needed it.”
“Thanks, Jenny,” said Perdita.
“I’ve laid out the codex,” Jenny continued. “There are gloves as the paper is extremely fragile. Mary had it authenticated in the early 1990s and it has been confirmed that the parchment, the ink and the wooden covers can be dated to between 1510 and 1560…”
“So it falls in the right time frame,” interrupted Perdita. “If Granny had already had it authenticated, why didn’t she publish her manuscript?”
“The codex gives a unique view of Catherine Howard’s reign. However, there are no recognised contemporary documents to support this version of events. Although it’s dated to the correct period, it could have been a contemporary fake used to create unrest.”
The Catherine Howard Conspiracy Page 19