‘Says him,’ she had replied and abruptly changed the subject to ask how Tamar’s daughter, Carenza, had done at a swimming gala the previous day.
Before her husband had died, Blake’s moods had begun to swing wildly. At times he would appear euphoric, at others, despair as black as night would engulf him and he would rage at Tabitha about the unfairness of his diagnosis of motor neurone disease: a cruel and debilitating disease for which there was no cure. Tabitha had known there were no words of reassurance she could offer because, as Blake stated so often, what was there to be done? What solace could words provide when he had been sentenced to death?
‘Who can offer me comfort when it’s a matter of time before my body collapses around me and I die?’ he had howled in anguish. Tabitha had never felt more helpless.
Blake’s words returned to her whenever she was at a low ebb and as she walked away from Edith and Gulliver, the pain of losing him, of his terrible betrayal, washed over her anew. Worse, Gulliver was angry too. He had directed it at Edith for sharing family secrets, but her instincts told her his emotions ran deeper.
Why am I even here?she thought in despair.I’m following clues in a scavenger hunt laid down over one hundred years ago for a book which probably no longer exists. It’s utter madness, coping with another moody man, who thinks it’s allowable to blame me for things over which I have no control.
Tears welled in her eyes. In a few short days, the happy inclusive atmosphere of Cerensthorpe Abbey had changed. The house which had felt like her sanctuary was becoming oppressive and threatening. When Edith had succumbed to the awful gastric bug, it had reminded them all of her great age and the looming spectre of death. She had celebrated her ninety-first birthday in April, she would not last forever.
Is this why Lucia has returned?wondered Tabitha.Has she decided to reunite with Gulliver in order to play lady of the manor?
The woman was certainly eager to sort through the contents of the house.What did she think was on the inventory list?Tabitha wondered. Lucia’s family ran art galleries, but they also dealt withobjets d’artand other rare artefacts. Did Lucia believe the Chaucer existed or was she searching for a different treasure?
Stop it,Tabitha mentally scolded herself.You don’t like the woman, but there’s no need to suspect she’s capable of theft.
She glanced at her watch, aware she should go back to her office and continue with her work, but, if she did, she had no doubt Gulliver would appear and, under threat of another scolding from Edith, offer a stiff-lipped apology. Right now, she was fed up with him and his ever-shifting emotions.
Tabitha hesitated at the top of the stairs. She disliked unfinished business and if in the near future, Lucia managed to persuade Gulliver to give her notice and force her to leave, she would never know if the rare Chaucer manuscript was truly hidden in Cerensthorpe Abbey. A recklessness overwhelmed her, and she turned away from the staircase that would lead to her office, instead marching along the corridor that led to the family chapel.
It had long since been deconsecrated and converted into a sitting room. It was rarely used as it faced north and held a chilliness no amount of heating could dispel, even in summer. Wood-panelled walls added to the gloomy atmosphere and a vast stained-glass window filtered the light, giving the room a twilight feel. The image in the glass was of an angel with a dove hovering above it with a white falcon on its shoulder, which was etched in dull blues, browns and muted greens. The two birds were the only points of light in the muddy scene. At the bottom, in elaborate scroll work was the name:
Robert Raven – 1621–1651.
Died fighting for his king at the Battle of Inverkeithing.
During a dinner in her first week, Gulliver had claimed the position of the chapel was deliberate.
‘When you were praying, you would always have felt uncomfortable because it was so cold. All those nuns, kneeling on bare boards.’
‘You’re a wicked boy,’ Edith had said, pretending to scold him. ‘You know very well the abbey church was a separate building until the house was gifted to Elizabeth Boleyn. The ruins in the garden are all that’s left of the original church. The family chapel was created in the seventeenth century during the English Civil War by Robert Raven, grandson of Maud Knollys, before he went into battle. The dates are on the stained-glass window. His wife, Anne, was said to have been the source of one of the family ghost stories. She’s supposed to have hidden aninjured cavalier in a priest hole, but he vanished without trace. He’s rumoured to haunt the ruins.’
Tabitha had only been in the chapel once, a few weeks after her arrival, in order to examine the window, photograph and catalogue it. Her visit had been brief as there had been a sense of sadness in the large room, with its air of perpetual dusk that had made her shiver. As such, Tabitha had paid scant attention to the vast painting which filled the wall leading to the old chapel on either her entrance or hurried exit.
Now, as she stood in the corridor, gazing at the image, she felt herself drawn into another world.
The colours, faded by time and dulled beneath varnish, had slipped into sepia, as though the scene belonged to a half-remembered dream. In the background, a riverbank stretched into the distance, with bare trees leaning towards the dark water, heavy clouds pressing down, while boats lay stranded on mudflats in the retreating tide. In the mud, tiny figures stooped, scarves and coats drawn tight against the cold, their shapes blurred as if they were drifting into memory rather than painted on a canvas. The square building on the horizon rose above them all, each corner marked by a tower, stark against the pallor of a winter sunrise.
Yet, what held the eye were the birds. Seven curlews waded in the shallows, their impossibly long beaks criss-crossing in an intricate geometry, each head turned a different way as though charting invisible paths. Their bodies seemed to lengthen as she stared, the lines of their beaks tangling into shapes that flickered at the edge of sight. A cross? The sweep of an axe?
Tabitha blinked and her gaze lifted again to the distant fortress. It recalled the White Tower, though here it stood in solitude, cut adrift from the teeming city that had always surrounded it, like a vision lifted out of time.
Tabitha took a step back, unnerved by the intensity of the painting. She flicked on the torch on her phone, averting her eyes from the piercing eyes of the birds, and examined the corners for a signature, hoping the name of an artist might offer some clues to the age of the piece. Nothing on the left-hand side, but after kneeling down and snapping various swirls and examining them in more details on her screen, she located a series of squiggles. Enlarging them, she deciphered the ancient letters.
‘Susannah Hornebolt or, maybe, Hurnebelt,’ she murmured and typed the first option it into a search engine. It was not a name she had ever heard.
To her astonishment, a list of entries appeared, naming her as the daughter of Flemish artist Gerard Hornebolt and sister of artist, Lucas. Tabitha’s eyes widened in surprise. Susannah had been an artist for Henry VIII and a gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber for Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Parr and, possibly, Queen Mary I.
Tabitha returned her gaze to the painting, wondering anew at the scale of it. She would never claim to be an expert, but even with her limited knowledge she knew the cost of such a piece would have been enormous. She also could not help but wonder who in the sixteenth century would have entrusted such a monumental task to a relatively untested female artist?
The words of the curse poem echoed in her mind:The gallows rise, the blade is bared – Thy neck shall feel what once was spared. For none outrun what lies within…
‘Anne Boleyn,’ she murmured as realisation dawned. ‘The poem is about Anne Boleyn. Would she have commissioned the painting?’
This thought both excited and unnerved her.
Again, Tabitha’s eyes strayed to the isolated building overlooking the mudflats in the painting. Was it the Tower ofLondon? The Boleyn connection to Cerensthorpe Abbey came first through Elizabeth Boleyn, then Mary Boleyn, Anne’s older sister, yet it was Anne’s emblem, the white falcon, that was referenced throughout the house.
