She questioned the search engine asking why Anne Boleyn used the white falcon and discovered it was to represent her Butler heritage, her paternal grandmother’s connection to the Earl of Ormond title. Tabitha did not understand the significance but made a mental note to check why this was important when she returned to her desk.
The image of the falcon in the chapel came to mind, then she remembered a tale Gulliver and Edith had told her one evening over dinner about another falcon. The story of the stained-glass window of the Black Lady and the oriel window – the saintly, dark-robed figure with a white falcon beneath her had been shattered in the bombing of 1941 when the house was being used as a hospital during the war. Edith had shown her a blurred photograph taken shortly before the explosion of a group of men in various stages of recovery with the window in the background. It had been imposing and despite Edith’s insistence that the image had been a benign and loving force, Tabitha had thought it was unnerving in its darkness and intensity. Again, the only light point had been the white falcon. The bird had survived, a shard caught in a pilot’s scarf, now kept in the scriptorium.
‘The falcon is glass,’ Gulliver had said, ‘but it’s so delicate, gentle, sometimes I feel the history of the abbey breathes through it, waiting to reveal its secrets.’
Opening the image of the poem on her phone, Tabitha searched for more references to the tragic queen:
traitor’s name
The mark of guilt’
So let the raven flap its wing
– were these references to the ravens at the Tower of London? She flipped through her pictures until she found the image of the clue from the magpies.
‘“Framed in gold, a hollow crown,”,’ she muttered, but as she searched for a crown or even a hint of gold in the curlew painting, there was nothing and she wondered whether Edith was mistaken.
The frame was an ornate wooden affair with no hints of colour. Instead, intricate carvings of acorns, the face of the Green Man peering out from a wreath of honeysuckle, leaves and fruit surrounded the curlews. There were no crowns hidden in the foliage and Tabitha wondered if this was a replacement for a once golden frame adorned with crowns. Perhaps the path of the scavenger hunt had run dry, the clue lost with the passing of time.
‘No,’ muttered Tabitha. ‘Edith is relying on me, I won’t give up yet.’ She returned her gaze to the clue and said aloud, ‘“Leaves time to hide inside”.’ Leaves time. Leaves time? Time? There were leaves on the frame, a few tiny leaves hung on the skeletal trees, but was there a clock which might offer a hint?
Once again, she swept her torch across the painting. Nothing. Edith had been certain this was where the poem pointed, but perhaps they had missed some subtlety. Were the curlews a distraction rather than a clue?
A sudden whirring above her head made her start, followed by four high, eldritch chimes. Spinning around, she saw an ancient clock almost hidden in the gloom, its carved case echoing the ornate frame opposite. In the torchlight, she saw there was no cuckoo door, but instead there was a golden crown with a small hammer to strike the hour. The sound was too strange to be that alone. A shiver of excitement passed through her.
‘“Leaves time to hide inside”,’ she whispered, fetching a chair from the former chapel and climbing up.
She leaned closer. Beside the crown was a whistle, part of the hammer’s mechanism, which had obviously emitted the strange noise and, hidden in the carving, she saw first the falcon, then seven curlews.It must be deliberate,she thought.Had Wilbur Swanne commissioned this clock?
‘The next clue must be inside,’ she murmured.
Really it was too heavy to remove alone, but she refused to call Gulliver with his current erratic moodiness and instead she persevered. At the front, there was the keyhole for winding the mechanism, but the sides were solid. Disappointment washed through her, until, lighting the last panel with her torch, she saw it: a small door, smooth on its hinges.
Her heart raced as she pulled it open. A leather box lay inside and with trembling hands, she eased it free. She shut the door and sat with the prize in her lap. The box creaked as she opened it, revealing a grey linen lining, foxed with age, and a single folded square of heavy paper. She recognised the handwriting at once – Wilbur Swanne’s. At the top was a date:
September 1906
and beneath was another clue.
Aerie, mantling, cadger and mews.
The bound home of the words for clues
Behind we wait, in the unknown space
Full of power and guile and grace.
26
THE JOURNAL OF WILBUR SWANNE – SEPTEMBER 1906
The new room is complete. It has been designed according to the specifications from Selwyn and his chaps at the British Museum. The team there has gone to a great deal of trouble to authenticate my book and have even trawled through many other collections held in the archives to create a provenance. He has suggested I also deposit all other supporting paperwork with the manuscript. It seems the least I can do when I have denied them the chance to reveal their discovery to the world.
Veronica and Ernest have departed to Maynooth in County Kildare until the New Year, where she will be staying with her sister, Jane, and her husband, William Skinner. They have taken a house there for a year while William works on a book. He has dreams of writing his memoirs after his many years as a diplomat in India, although why anyone would be interested when he has led a tiresome life is beyond me, but each man must do as he sees fit.
Sad though it makes me to be parted from Ernest again, it does offer an opportunity for my darling Helena and our daughter, Eglantine, to join me. My heart bursts at the chance to finally show Helena my beloved Cerensthorpe Abbey. We have concocted a story saying she is the cousin of a friend who has been recentlywidowed and is in need of a break in the country. We are aware it is a flimsy story, but perhaps neither of us care, as long as we are together. If life had been different, Cerensthorpe Abbey might have been her home and she would have been mother to both Ernest and our daughter.
However, thoughts such as these are wrong. This way madness lies. Fate has dealt us a difficult hand, but we do our best. We depart London in three days; in the meantime, I intend to shower Helena with gifts and ensure she has all she will need to be my temporary lady of the manor.
