‘It takes a lot to outshine Marquess House,’ he agreed, ‘but this is stunning. I saw the ruins in the garden; are they the original abbey church?’
‘Yes, it fell into disuse after the property changed from a religious house to a secular college under the ownership of Elizabeth Boleyn,’ she explained. ‘The house was passed to Mary Boleyn, then her daughter, Maud, who is Gulliver and Edith’s ancestor.’
‘The Swannes have a direct connection to the Boleyns?’ he asked, stopping dead.
‘Yes, why?’ replied Tabitha, bemused.
‘That explains a great deal.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Before you arrived this morning, Stephanie and I had a quick look through the authentication documents. I wanted to ensure there were no nasty surprises for Edith, she’s such a lovely lady, and Steph read some ofThe Mother’s Tale.’
‘And?’
‘After a few pages, she asked if there were any family links to the Boleyns with the Swannes as she thought there was a connection to the text.’
‘In what way?’
‘Steph has hypothesised that the “mother” in the tale might be Elizabeth Boleyn, mother of Mary, Anne and George, wife of Thomas, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk.’
‘No,’ said Tabitha, astonished.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘and if she was the owner of Cerensthorpe Abbey, it would make sense that she might leave it here rather than at the Boleyn residence of Hever Castle.’
‘But why would she have placed a story in an ancient copy of Chaucer?’ asked Tabitha.
‘I’m hoping these pages will explain,’ he said.
‘If that’s the case, why didn’t Wilbur Swanne or his contact at the British Museum do more research?’
‘Who knows? But back in the 1900s when Wilbur shut the manuscript away, there was far less interest in the female side of history,’ he said.
‘True,’ murmured Tabitha, but she also wondered if Wilbur’s grief was what had driven him to hide the documents. They were intrinsically linked to the tale of his life with Helena. Was locking everything out of sight his way of surviving the pain?
They reached her office and Mark nodded approvingly at the state-of-art photocopier.
‘There’s a setting which will help clean up the pages,’ he said. ‘It might take a while, as I’ll be doing each page individually.’
Tabitha cleared the old refectory table which stood in one corner of the room, ready to compile the pages, then joined Mark by the photocopier.
‘Was there something specific that made your wife thinkThe Mother’s Talewas written by Elizabeth Boleyn?’ asked Tabitha.
‘It’s the opening page,’ he said. ‘Listen to this, “I have lived without them for two years – my daughter, my son. My other daughter, for her own safety, lives away from our family with its tainted lineage and its cursed name. He did this to me as an act of revenge. He destroyed us all, one by one by one, in a myriad of devious and wicked ways. None challenge him. None know the truth, but one day my tale will be told. I shall reveal his villainy, his cruelty and the evil blackness of his sorcerer’s heart…”.’
‘There are no names,’ she said. ‘It could be anyone, it might not even be Tudor.’
‘True, but there’s a line further on about “killing them both”; we work a lot with documents from the Tudor era, and all these comments made me think of Anne and George Boleyn being executed and Mary Boleyn banished from court. When you said there was a connection to the extended Boleyn family earlier, it felt even more viable. There’s a poem too, it begins“One for sorrow, Two for joy?—”’
‘One of the clues we solved involved a hawking whistle engraved with the words, “Two for joy”,’ interrupted Tabitha.
‘Do you know who it belonged to?’ asked Mark in excitement.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘It was on a taxidermy magpie which is mentioned in Wilbur’s diary.’
‘Gross,’ said Mark.
‘Horrific,’ agreed Tabitha ‘but if the words were written on one of the pages of the tale and you’re right about the author, could the whistle have belonged to Elizabeth Boleyn?’
