She is remarkably brash, our Sienna. Phyllida would be head over heels for her.
‘There’s a paywall,’ explains Sienna to Roddy, as if he is quite obviously a complete idiot.
‘Find a free newspaper archive, then.’
‘I already tried.’ She taps away at her phone again. Eventually she says, ‘Nup. Gotta pay.’ She holds out her hand. ‘It’sThe London Standard. So, you can read other stuff too, after you subscribe.’
Roddy opens his laptop. He types something in and stares at the screen. ‘Try the Scottish National Library archive,’ he says eventually.
‘I did. You have to have a Scottish address to get access to the papers for free.’
‘Make one up.’
‘I already tried that while you were choking,’ says Sienna, eyeing him as if he is still at the starting line after the race has been won. ‘I put in some random address from Edinburgh, but it says the address has to beverified. If you stopped being such a cheapskate and gave me your credit card, we could have read this article by now, and maybe we’d know more about Francis.’
Roddy sighs again and hands over the card and Sienna taps at her phone, then stares at the screen. Long minutes of waiting follow.
‘Anything interesting?’ I ask.
Sienna clears her throat and looks up, eyes sparkling. ‘It’s totally worth the ten pounds a month.’
‘Ten pounds?’ splutters Roddy.
‘Read it out quickly,’ I say, desperate to hear more.
‘Okay. Ready? I do drama at school, so I’m going to bring out the tension in the scene when I read it.’ She raises her eyebrows and wiggles them dramatically.
‘Good lord,’ mutters Roddy.
Sienna begins to read.
23
DOROTHEA
1975, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
The grass was damp beneath her knees, but while the baby slept, Dorothea continued pulling weeds and cutting dead heads. She stared through the tangle of fuchsia, let her eyes blur as they rested on the blackening gargoyles of the garden fountain framing the steps to Bleddesley House.
She tried to breathe, to ease the pain in her chest as she cut a rose and put the pink bloom into her trug. She added bright fronds of blue salvia, the pink bell-spikes of lupins, purple foxglove and echinacea with their daisy white innocent heads. She gathered and snipped until the trug was full.
She brushed the dirt from her knees and picked up the Moses basket from the shade beneath the oak and set out across the grass to the rear entrance. Inside the utility room, her gardening gloves still on, she placed the sleeping baby down and began to pluck at the lower leaves of a stem, carefully placing them tothe side. She lifted a vase from the top cupboard and filled it with water. As the baby began to whimper, she arranged the flowers; a pretty palate of blooms that would pass muster. She glanced at the leaves of the foxglove on the bench, knowing their potency, the harm they would cause in a potion. Her heart rattled.
‘Dorothea?’ Francis’s voice came from the kitchens. She took one last look at the discarded leaves and hurried in with the vase.
‘Here I am.’
Francis regarded the arrangement with an assessing eye. ‘They’re pretty. I like the little white blossom branches.’
‘That’s blackthorn,’ said Dorothea. ‘It represents our fate. Our destiny.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My grandmother liked to tell me about the Goddess Morrigan when I was younger. The Morrigan was a shapeshifter who could take the form of a raven or crow and would fly into battlefields. She could predict death. But she was also a guardian. She knew the bounds of a person’s fate.’
‘You mean she knew about their life and how it would turn out?’ The boy eyed her sceptically.
‘Some say our lives are predestined. That our joys and sadnesses and loves are fated. What awaits us is already determined and, at the right time, it will find us.’
