Kitabı oku: «The Phantom Tree»

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

Copyright

Chapter 1

Alison, Marlborough, Wiltshire, the present day

She saw the portrait quite by chance, or so she thought.

It was eight weeks to Christmas and the rain sodden streets of Marlborough already glistened in the gaudy light of the decorations that were strung from buildings and lampposts. The wind was strong that night and the illuminations swung back and forth scattering shadows and shards of colour over the late-night shoppers below. A Victorian market was being held in the town square and the air was thick with the smell of grilled sausages and hot soup. It made Alison feel hungry.

She put her head down and increased her pace against the fine rain that slicked the pavements. She hated this sort of faux historical event with rosy, smiling stallholders dressed up in costume. Beneath the crinolines and jackets they had on their thermal vests and long johns to guard against the cold. They had waterproof boots and raincoats. They thought this play-acting was fun, a jolly celebration of Christmas past.

She remembered past Christmases very differently; the bone sharp cold, the damp, the chilblains and the hunger that had hollowed her stomach. Even though she had been trapped in the present day for so long now that time had started to blur, some of her past she could remember with utter clarity. Pain, sickness, violence, death, had been a raw reality. Someone thrust a toffee apple under her nose in an invitation to buy, and she shuddered and turned away, picking up her pace along the pavement.

There was a creaking noise high above her, a flap as the wind caught the edge of an inn sign and set it swinging.

The White Hart.

She stared at the image of the majestic white stag as it swayed backwards and forwards in the wind. Its head was raised proudly. Around its neck was a golden crown. It was strange how the most potent and magical of Savernake Forest’s symbols survived into this brash and modern world. There were traces of history everywhere; in street names, on inn signs, in old tracks and ancient hedgerows, buried walls and tumbled gravestones. Scratch the surface and it was there.

Alison had seen a white hart in the forest once. Her cousin Edward Seymour had said that the Queen had wanted to come to hunt it, the hart being the ultimate hunter’s trophy and Elizabeth being a queen who collected such things. Perhaps she had come to Wolf Hall after Alison had left. She did not know. There was no record of a royal visit but then so much fell through the cracks of the past.

The fresh blast of air from the Downs to the north brought with it a softer scent, of mingled herbs and flowers, wild garlic, basil and lavender, taking Alison straight back to a long-lost summer in the garden at Wolf Hall and the smell of sun-warm brick and hot grass. She had not been happy in those days but still the sense of loss and dislocation hit her fiercely and gave her no time to prepare. There was too much that was familiar here in Marlborough—the town, the inn, the memories. She should have realised that coming back to Wiltshire was a bad idea. But she had had so little choice.

Breathe. Accept. Wait.

The wave of dizziness and nausea retreated a little. Alison found she was leaning against a wall between two shops, rather like a drunk steadying himself as he tried to weave his way home late at night. Awareness returned to her, the smooth coldness of a drainpipe against her clutching fingers, the chill sting of the rain and the heavy, greasy smell of the street market.

She was standing in front of a shop she had not seen before. High street shops came and went, of course, and it was a good ten years since she had been in Marlborough, maybe more. She tried not to count most of the time.

The shop was actually an art gallery, all high-tech lighting and huge windows, its modernity blaringly incongruous in the middle of Marlborough High Street’s olde-worlde charm. Most of the paintings Alison could see through the window were equally strident, highly coloured, swirling patterns in oil with huge price tags and no artistic merit in her opinion. Not that she knew much about art. She drew for pleasure and had done since she was a child, but she had no training and no technique to speak of.

To the right of the enormous bow window was a pastoral scene with a spotlight trained on it. It might have been an antique. Alison could not really tell. Below the canvas ran a broad white shelf that stretched along the full length of the showroom. There were a number of smaller paintings displayed there, mainly portraits, and she knew at once that they were old, sixteenth century, to judge from the style and the type of clothing. There was King Henry VIII, painted at the moment his glorious, golden youthfulness was changing into something more watchful and inimical. When Alison had been a child, his name had been used to frighten them all into obedience: ‘Behave yourself or old King Hal will come to get you.’ When she had been young she had had no idea what he had looked like but her imagination had supplied the image of a monster. She had seen hundreds of pictures of him since, of course. The English were proud of their infamous, spouse-murdering monarch. Distance had lent the sort of affection to his memory that had never been felt in her own time.

It was odd seeing Henry now, a relic, a throwback to her past. It unsettled her.

Alison’s gaze travelled on to the next portrait on the shelf, that of a woman, standing, her hands folded demurely in that style so beloved of artists who wanted to persuade the viewer that Tudor womanhood was modest and decorous. The display light cast a shadow across her face. Alison strained closer to see. This was no one as instantly recognisable as Henry and yet there was a familiarity about her. It was a face she knew.

Mary Seymour.

Alison’s breath stopped. There was a tight pain in her chest and a buzzing in her ears. Mary. After all this time.

She had never given up hope. It wasn’t in her nature to despair although she had come very close to it so many times. All the history books—those that mentioned Mary Seymour at all—said that she had died as a child. Alison had known that was not true but she had never discovered what had happened to Mary after she had left Wolf Hall.

‘Help me,’ she had said to Mary all those years ago. ‘Help me to find my son. I’ll come back for him. Leave me word…’

She had not begged, precisely; her relationship with Mary had been too prickly to allow her to show that vulnerability. She had phrased it as an order, but Mary had known. There had been a bargain between them. She had helped Mary escape Wolf Hall and, in return, Mary had promised to help her.

Mary was the key to finding Arthur. She always had been and so Alison had held tenaciously to the belief that one day she would see Mary again.

And now she had.

Suddenly she felt faint with shock, trembling, tears pricking her eyes.

‘Are you all right?’ Someone was addressing her, a woman with a plastic rain hat and an anxious expression. She spoke in the tones of someone who feels obliged to offer help but sincerely hopes it isn’t going to be needed. Alison forced a smile.

‘I’m fine, thanks. I tripped over the edge of the pavement and winded myself for a moment.’

The woman’s sharp gaze scanned her face.

She thinks I’m drunk, Alison thought. She took a deep breath and pinned the smile on tighter. ‘No harm done,’ she said. ‘Thanks for stopping to check.’

‘Well, if you’re sure… The woman was already moving away, duty done.

Alison found that her hand was resting against the windowpane as though reaching out to touch the portrait within. She let it fall to her side and straightened up, pushing open the door and stepping from the dark street into the bright interior of the gallery. For a moment the harsh light dazzled her. Out of it came the figure of a man, summoned by the bell on the door. He was elderly, greying, with a stoop and leather elbow patches on his tweed jacket, but his eyes were bright, vivid blue, and he seemed to crackle with life and energy. Alison felt it at once, that force of personality that some people seemed to project effortlessly, lighting up everything around them.

‘Can I help you?’ He sounded surprised that anyone should have dropped in on a wet December evening.

‘That portrait of a lady,’ Alison said. ‘The Tudor one…’

‘Beautiful, isn’t it,’ the man said.

Alison was taken aback. Had Mary been beautiful? Perhaps she had, although Alison had never thought so. She was the one whom men had admired. She had been curves to Mary’s angles, rose to her sallow. She looked at the portrait again, trying to be dispassionate and to ignore the stirrings of old jealousy. She had never liked Mary. In the beginning she had hated her with a child’s simple hatred. That had grown into a more complicated set of emotions as she grew up, but they had never been friends. They had been too different and too far apart.

The woman in the picture had features that were neat rather than beautiful: a long nose but delicate and not disproportionately so, arched brows above eyes of an indeterminate dark colour, a slight smile on the pursed pink lips. There was only the faintest hint of the hair colour beneath her Tudor gable hood though Alison knew it to be red brown, like her mother’s. Mary’s gown was of sumptuous gold and green velvet embroidered with pearls. She looked to be a woman of substance. There were pearls too on the hood and a space where one was missing. That was typical of Mary. She would not have noticed.

She realised that the man was waiting patiently for the question she had not yet articulated.

‘It’s lovely,’ she agreed. ‘The artist must have been very talented.’

She saw him smile and realised that she had not quite been able to repress the spite. Mary, grown up, or at least on the cusp of womanhood, made her as jealous as Mary the child had once done.

She sighed. None of that mattered. What was important was that Mary had survived. Thrived, in fact, by the look of it. And that was good because Mary was the key. Mary had promised to leave word of Arthur for her, and Mary never broke her promises.

Alison felt it again then, the dizziness that was a mixture of hope and terror. She could not let herself believe that this time she would find Arthur. The crash of despair that had followed each time she had failed had been almost too much to bear.

‘... unidentified.’ She realised that the man had been speaking all the time that she had been lost in the turbulence of her thoughts.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Did you say that the artist has not been identified or the sitter has not been identified?’

Now he was looking at her with concern. She caught a glance of herself in the mirrored wall behind the sales desk, all wet rat’s tails hair and pallid complexion. No wonder he was fidgeting with the display in front of him, fussily moving an ugly ceramic vase two inches to the left whilst he waited for her to take herself off. She could hardly fit the profile of a potential customer.

‘The artist is unknown,’ he repeated patiently. ‘The sitter is Anne Boleyn.’

‘No,’ Alison said. She cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, but that isn’t Anne Boleyn. It’s Mary Seymour.’

‘It is Anne Boleyn.’ The man was still smiling in a rather determined fashion. He was charming. She didn’t deserve such tolerance. ‘Tudor portraits aren’t my forte,’ he said, ‘but I do know that this is a newly discovered portrait of Anne, authenticated only recently.’ He pointed to the background of the painting. It was dark and the shapes drawn there were difficult to decipher. ‘Can you see the box?’ he asked. ‘It has her initials on it.’ Then, as Alison frowned, leaning forward to peer into the depths of the picture: ‘AB. For Anne Boleyn.’

The box. Her box.

Alison could see it, now that he had pointed it out. It sat on a ledge to the right of Mary’s head, only the very faintest sheen on its patina showing in the dark background. It would have been easy to miss, this clue, this promise.

‘See, Alison, I did not forget you. I have your workbox here, safe for you.’

She looked back at Mary’s painted face, at the slight sideways glance that led the viewer’s gaze to the wooden box and the bold initials. It had been made of walnut, she remembered, worn smooth over the years by the touch of her fingers. She had loved that box, storing any number of inconsequential items in it: her thimble, a length of ribbon, and a scrap of lace. She might have kept Edward’s love notes in it had he written her any, but he had not.

‘My godson could tell you more about it,’ the man said. ‘He was the one who discovered the portrait. He’s written a book about it. He’s speaking at the festival tomorrow night.’

‘Festival?’ Alison said. She tried to get a grip. She felt strange, jittery. Although the shop was almost aggressively modern she felt closer to the past than she had done in years, disorientated and confused.

‘There’s a literary festival running all week,’ the man said. ‘Adam—my godson—is talking about the painting and about the Tudor court.’ He nodded towards Mary, serene under the dazzling lights. ‘It’s all very exciting. Apparently, there aren’t many portraits of Anne Boleyn.’

‘And this isn’t one of them, I’m afraid,’ Alison said. Rain was seeping down her neck, making her shiver. Or perhaps the shivers were coming from elsewhere, somewhere far deeper inside.

There was a pile of flyers for the talk spread in an artful fan on the white shelf beside the portrait. She bent to pick one up.

‘Adam Hewer,’ she read. ‘“Historian author and presenter, unveils the face of Anne Boleyn. Don’t miss this exciting event, exclusive to the Marlborough Festival.”’ There was a picture of a book cover for Discovering Anne Boleyn and a photograph of the author:

Adam.

Alison sat down abruptly in a flimsy-looking white plastic chair that she thought was probably part of an art installation. It creaked.

‘You look quite done up,’ the gallery owner said kindly. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea? It helps, you know.’

‘I’m fine,’ Alison said automatically. ‘Just a bit tired.’

Odd that it should be Adam, of all people, who should be the one to lead her to Mary. Or perhaps it was not odd at all. That sense of time shifting, the lure of the brightly lit window, the portrait… It had not happened by chance. When it came to fate and time she did not believe in coincidence.

She needed to think. She had to get away from the bright lights that were making her head ache with the buzz of too many discoveries, made too quickly. She dropped the flyer back down on the shelf where the edges curled up slightly in the heat of the lights.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind but I’d better go now.’

‘Alison?’

Adam’s voice stopped her when she was two steps away from the door. She turned slowly. It had not occurred to her that he might be there, listening, and now she felt a prickle of annoyance that he had not made his presence known sooner.

He looked older than she remembered, but not by much. It was a good ten years since they had met but annoyingly Adam seemed to have aged better than she felt she had. He was tall, well built, with brown eyes that were a startling contrast to his fair hair, and had an air of restless energy that was familiar to her. With a sudden tug of the heart she realised he had become the man she had glimpsed in the boy she had known.

After they had split up, she had shied away from following Adam’s career, although she did know that he was one of the new generation of TV historians, celebrity academics who travelled to exotic places to present the past in new and vibrant ways. As a breed they were young, good-looking, photogenic and formidably bright. Apparently, they made history accessible. That had always felt a painful irony to her. History was not accessible at all; at least she did not find it to be.

Adam came out of the office at the back and into the bright lights of the gallery, casual, hands thrust into the pockets of his trousers. ‘I thought it was you,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

He was smiling. Alison remembered the public-school charm, so like that of his godfather, which could smooth over the most awkward of encounters. It had bowled her over when first they had met reminding her painfully of the life she had left behind. She had clung to something that felt familiar in an alien world only to find that there was no similarity between Adam and the men she had known in her past.

Now she felt a disconcerting echo of that teenage confusion and she was cross with herself because there was a flutter in the pit of her stomach and a whisper of what might have been. Stupid, because what might have been had already happened: a youthful affair that had burned itself out.

‘I’m good, thanks,’ she said, matching his effortless courtesy with what felt like abject gaucheness. ‘Just down here for a few days. I work in London now. But you—’ She gestured awkwardly towards the flyers. ‘You’re doing well. TV shows, writing…’

She knew she sounded inane but he merely inclined his head. ‘Thanks.’

‘It’s what you always wanted.’

She saw a flicker of expression in his eyes then, gone too quick to read. He said nothing. Alison was starting to feel hot and anxious. It had been a stupid thing to say. She knew nothing of what Adam wanted these days. She had barely known him ten years before and if she had realised she was going to meet him again today she would have been better prepared.

Butterflies fluttered again, trapped, beneath her breastbone. She needed to give herself some time and space to think. Adam’s godfather—in an unusual breach of courtesy, Adam had not introduced him—had moved away, pretending to rearrange the paperwork on the sales desk, but she knew he was listening, wondering.

‘Well…’ She waved a vague hand towards the door. ‘I really must go. Good luck for the talk tomorrow. Not that you’ll need it, of course.’

‘I heard what you were saying,’ Adam said, ignoring her words. ‘You don’t think this is a portrait of Anne Boleyn.’

Alison felt a sharp pang of disappointment, followed swiftly by a sort of anger at her own obtuseness. This was why Adam had come out to speak to her. It was not because he had wanted to see her. It was because she had raised questions about his work. The anger pricked her into speech.

‘It’s a portrait of Mary Seymour,’ she said, ‘the daughter of Katherine Parr and Thomas Seymour.’

Adam paused for a moment, studying her face. There was a tight frown between his brows now. Alison waited for him to contradict her. She was already regretting her words; she should have gone back to the hotel, thought about what had happened, decided on what she should do next, rather than blurt out a statement that would only make Adam want to know more.

‘I thought Mary Seymour died as a child?’ Adam said.

Kudos to Adam, Alison thought. Most people had never heard of Mary Seymour, let alone knew what had happened to her. She did not know herself. Until tonight her search for Mary had drawn a blank. She had hunted her through books, archives, museums and galleries and had found next to nothing. Mary’s had been a life almost completely lost from history. But the one thing that Alison did know was that Mary had not died as a child.

She shifted, aware of Adam’s acute gaze resting on her. ‘She definitely survived into adulthood,’ she said.

‘I assume there is evidence to support that?’ Adam leaned against the edge of the sales desk and folded his arms. His tone was not disbelieving, but there was more than a hint of challenge in it. Alison felt a flutter down her spine. This was precisely the sort of conversation she should have avoided until she got her head together.

‘I’ve seen other portraits of Mary,’ she said. ‘I know a bit about her. I researched her for some work I was doing…’

She could sense Adam’s puzzlement. One thing he did know about her was that she was no historian. When they had met at summer school in Marlborough, she was a sullen teenager with a sponsored place on a tourism course. He had just accepted an offer to read History at Cambridge.

‘Genealogy,’ she said quickly, forestalling his next question, making it up as she went along. ‘I was looking for some stuff on my family tree and found Mary. There’s a distant connection between us.’

She felt as though she was digging herself in deeper rather than out.

‘Genealogy,’ Adam repeated. His gaze was narrowed intently on her now. He looked as though he didn’t believe a word. ‘You never talked about your family,’ he said slowly. ‘You told me you couldn’t leave them behind fast enough.’

‘That’s how I felt at eighteen,’ Alison said. ‘People change.’ She fidgeted with the strap of her bag. ‘Look, forget I mentioned Mary at all. You’ve got a talk and a book…’

‘And a TV programme,’ Adam said dryly. ‘All based on the premise that this is a portrait of Anne Boleyn not Mary Seymour.’

Alison felt a flicker of sympathy for him. The discovery of a new portrait of Anne Boleyn was quite a coup and would bring Adam lots of publicity. She had planted a seed of doubt in his mind now and even though he knew she was not a professional historian, he could not risk making a highly visible mistake.

‘It was authenticated,’ Adam said now, almost to himself. He straightened and pushed away from the desk, taking several strides across the gallery before turning back towards her, all repressed frustration and energy. ‘We found it with some other Tudor artefacts,’ he said. ‘There was no doubt about the dating. Then there was the box with the initials on it…’

‘The box still exists?’ Alison cut in quickly. ‘The one in the portrait?’

Adam stared at her. ‘Yes. Why?’

‘Oh.’ Alison moderated her tone, realising she had sounded too eager. ‘I thought there might be something interesting in it, that’s all. Something to do with Mary, I mean.’

Adam was still watching her. It was unsettling. She had always thought she was a good liar but now she was starting to doubt it.

‘There were some items inside,’ he agreed. ‘If that is indeed Mary Seymour in the portrait, I suppose they might have some connection to her.’ He did not elaborate and Alison knew it was deliberate. There was no reason why he would satisfy her curiosity.

Her heart was thumping. She could feel herself shaking. She knew she should not push this now but desperation was driving her harder than she had ever known it. Mary seemed only a breath away. And Arthur… What clues had Mary left her to Arthur?

‘Where did you find the box?’ she asked, and she could hear the quiver in her voice.

Adam shook his head. There was a faint smile playing about his lips now.

‘I’ll trade you that information – and more,’ he said, ‘to see the genealogical research you’ve done on Mary Seymour.’

There was a small, deadly pause.

Alison knew she was trapped. She could not see any way that she could show Adam the work she had done on tracing Mary without disclosing her own history. He had been right: she had not told him a single thing about her family. She had never spoken of them. But they were all there on the pages of notes she had so painstakingly compiled. The Seymour family tree linked them together, tangled as the roots of the old oaks of Savernake Forest. They were all there: she, Edward, Mary, Arthur…

The silence stretched out whilst her mind scrambled for a solution, but then Adam shifted and smiled a condescending smile that made her itch to smack him.

‘I thought not,’ he said pleasantly. ‘There is no research, is there?’ He ran a hand through his thick, fair hair. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why you’ve suddenly turned up after all this time, Alison, but there’s really no point. I moved on a long time ago—’

‘What? Wait!’ Alison drew back. ‘Are you implying I’m here because I wanted to see you? I didn’t even know about your talk!’ She threw out a hand, narrowly missing the ceramic vase. ‘I came in because of her,’ she said, pointing at Mary’s picture. ‘It was nothing to do with you—’

‘Whatever.’ Adam raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘I’m not interested.’

‘Fine,’ Alison snapped. ‘Then I hope you don’t find that some other person more academically credible than I blows your Anne Boleyn theory to smithereens.’

She pushed open the door of the gallery and stepped out into the driving rain. She thought she heard Adam call after her as she slipped out into the dark but she did not wait, pulling up the hood of her jacket and hunching deeper inside it when the wind caught her with its icy edge. The disconsolate re-enactors were closing down their stalls and heading to the pub. A woman was wheeling a pushchair erratically across the pavement and was dragging a small child along with her other hand. He had toffee apple smeared across his face and was screaming.

Emotion pierced Alison deep inside where the hurt and the loneliness were locked away. She shuddered, blocking out the child’s scrunched-up face and the mother’s harassed scolding. Only fifty yards further along the wet pavement was her hotel. A small bay tree stood shivering in a planter on each side of the door. She hurried inside.

She’d chosen somewhere modern and exclusive rather than one of Marlborough’s more traditional places to stay. She’d always found that embracing the present was the best way to keep the past at bay. Except that in Marlborough tonight the past had swept back like a dark tide.

She was still shaking. She knew that rationally she could not blame Adam for thinking that she was only trying to stir up trouble, but rationality had nothing to do with the fury and frustration that welled up in her now. She felt the hot prick of angry tears against her eyelids. She had waited so long for word from Mary, each time she failed to find her, absorbing the blank wall of silence and the bitterness of defeat. And now here was Mary—and the box—and Adam was thwarting her attempts to get closer.

The winter storm was gathering, sending litter skipping along the gutters, dimming the Christmas lights with a fresh downpour of rain but, inside, the hotel was warm, opulent and lit discreetly by lamps with striped beige and cream shades. A smiling receptionist handed Alison her key. So often, Alison found light and warmth – the most basic trappings of modern life – gave her comfort and made her feel safe. Tonight, though, they only served to emphasise her sense of dislocation. So did the impersonal luxury of her room.

She dropped her soaking jacket on the floor and lay down on the bed, staring at the orange glow of the streetlights beyond the windows. She knew she did not have much choice. Adam had information she needed. He had the portrait, the box, possibly other artefacts connected to Mary. She had been waiting for five hundred years for news of her son. She could not let the chance slip now.

Chapter 2

Mary, Wiltshire, 1557

Alison Banestre and I were cousins of a kind. We were both orphans. There the bond between us began and ended: Alison, my enemy.

We made a bargain, she and I. She helped me to escape; I helped her to find her son. It is entirely possible to bargain with an enemy if there is something that you both want and so it proved. Thus we were bound together through time.

We met at Wolf Hall. I came there in the summer of fifteen hundred and fifty-seven, in the fourth year of the reign of Mary the Queen. I was a Mary, too, cousin of the late king, Edward, daughter to one dead queen and niece to another, with a famous name and not a penny to pay my way. I was ten years old and I already had a reputation for witchcraft.

‘The child is possessed, your grace,’ the cook at Grimsthorpe told the Duchess of Suffolk when, at the age of five, I was found sitting under a table in the kitchens, holding a posset that had curdled. ‘That cream was as fresh as a daisy only a moment ago.’

‘Mary broke my spinning top!’ one of my Seymour cousins wailed one day when the wooden toy was found to have split neatly into two halves like a cut pear. ‘She put a spell on it!’

That was the first time I realised that I possessed the magic. He had been tormenting me and I had hated him; the anger had boiled over within me and I had wanted nothing more than to teach him a lesson.

I did not want such power though. I wanted no more than to be ordinary, accepted. My mother, many years before, had been within inches of arrest for heresy. Witchcraft was but one strand of such blasphemy and dissent and the thought of following her fate terrified me. Yet I could not escape. It came with me to Savernake, the whisper of witchcraft, wrapped like a cloak about me, for I was different, other, an outsider, whether I wished it or not.

My name is Mary Seymour. I was born at Sudeley Castle but have no recollection of my nursery there, hung with red and gold, for almost as soon as I came into the world my mother left it. I’m told that my father had never anticipated that she might die in childbirth, which is odd since it is a common danger, particularly for a woman such as my mother Katherine Parr who was past the age when it was wise to have a first child or indeed perhaps a child at all. But she was giddy for love of him and he was giddy for love of himself so I imagine they gave little thought to the consequences of their infatuation.

I was born. My mother died. My father professed himself to be so stunned by grief that he could not think straight. However he knew enough to realise he did not want the burden of a baby daughter, so he took me to London and abandoned me in the nursery of my aunt and uncle, the Duke and Duchess of Somerset, where I might have cousins with whom to grow up. It was a good plan, if a self-interested one, and it might well have turned out quite differently had it not been for his overweening ambition, which toppled over into treason.

My earliest memory was of being unwanted.

‘What is to become of the Lady Mary?’ My governess, Mistress Aiglonby was the only one who, in the chaotic aftermath of my father’s arrest for treason, pressed for my family to continue to care for me. I can still hear the wail of her voice rising above the sound of my belongings being packed away into boxes. I had no real sense of what was happening. I remember tipping my set of skittles out of the box again, spilling them all over the floor and tripping the nursemaid up as she ran about trying to fold my clothes into a bag that was too small. She was red of face and flustered, and looked near to tears.

‘Lady Mary cannot stay here.’ It was my aunt, the duchess, who spoke. She had no warmth in her, least of all towards me.

‘I agree it would be difficult to explain to her in the future that her uncle signed her father’s death warrant.’ Dearest Liz Aiglonby. She could be tart when she chose. She had been one of my mother’s maids before she became my governess. Her family were ambitious for preferment at court but that did not prevent her from defending me like a lioness.

‘That was not my point.’ The duchess’s tone had chilled still further. ‘Let her mother’s kin take her in.’

‘The Parrs do not want her.’

No one wants her.

My skittles had been a present from my father. They were carved into the shape of men, painted to look like sailors. I took one in my fist and neatly struck off the head of another with it. Or so I am told. In truth, I probably remember nothing of this, being too young, although it feels as though the memory is real.

‘Lord Seymour suggested her grace of Suffolk…’ Mistress Aiglonby sounded hesitant now and my aunt gave a brusque bark of laughter.

‘Why would he do that? I thought he liked her?’ Her voice changed. Malice rang clear as a bell. ‘Mayhap the rumours are true and she did refuse him and this is his revenge.’

‘Her grace was a close friend of the late Queen.’

‘Which does not mean she would wish to be saddled with her penniless child.’

Yet to the Duchess of Suffolk I was sent, like an unwelcome gift, trailing my retinue of nursemaids, rockers, laundresses and servants.

Lady Suffolk was renowned for her piety but this did not mean she possessed generosity of spirit as well.

‘The late Queen’s child is too expensive for me to keep,’ she told anyone who would listen, but no one was listening, not really, not even parliament, which eventually restored to me all that was left of my father’s property. This was practically nothing. So my expensive household was dismissed but for a few servants, and Lady Suffolk sent me to her castle at Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire since I could live more cheaply in the country than in London.

I loved Grimsthorpe. The castle had been neglected since the visit of the old king Henry some ten years before and its rooms smelled of stale air and damp and secrets. There were locked doors and tumbledown walls, rambling gardens and endless woods under wide blue skies. Best of all, no one cared what I did so no one interfered. One of Liz’s brothers came to tutor me sometimes, and Liz herself tried to instil in me the skills and lessons appropriate to a lady, but I was a stubborn child and had no interest in learning. I think that the Duchess of Suffolk might have tried to betroth me young had I even the smallest dowry but as I had nothing but notoriety she knew no one would want to wed me.

How long my idyllic life at Grimsthorpe might have continued I do not know, for when I was eight years old the duchess and her fierce Protestantism fell foul of the Bishop of Winchester and she vowed to leave England for fear of persecution. There was no question that she would take me abroad with her. For a couple of years, I was shunted from pillar to post, from London to the country, from north to south, from court to church and back again. I was a nuisance. Queen Mary declared that I should be sent to one of my father’s manors. Liz Aiglonby staunchly maintained I was too young, that I was the Queen’s ward and her responsibility. Mary said dryly that as the Seymours had begat me so to the Seymours I should go.

My uncle Somerset had followed my father to the executioner’s block, so it was left to my cousin Edward, as head of the family, to provide for me. He and I were united in disgrace, the Seymours fallen further than they had ever risen.

It was then I first heard the whisper of that name:

Wolf Hall.

My first sight of the place was on a day of bright sunlight, but once we were within the forest of Savernake the sun vanished into darkness and the track seemed interminable and lonely. It felt as though we were arriving at the end of the world.

‘What sort of a name is Wolf Hall?’ Liz asked, as she placed my clothes in the big bound chest in the chamber I was to share with my cousin Alison. We had been welcomed warmly enough on arrival with bread, a little butter and some fruit although it was closer to dinner than breakfast time. Dame Margery, the housekeeper, had then shown us to my bedchamber and had vanished, although Cousin Alison had remained. She sat in the window where the pale light seemed to shimmer on her flaxen hair. I had never seen anything so pretty in my life.

Liz sounded suspicious, I thought, as though she expected a wolf to appear from behind a tree and gobble her whole. She disliked the country and thought its inhabitants unruly and unpredictable, whether human, feathered or furred. Nor did she like Wolf Hall itself. The rambling old manor was even more run down than Grimsthorpe had been and here I was less than no one and Liz, consequently, nothing at all for all her London connections and service to the court.

‘Wolf Hall is nothing to do with wolves,’ Alison said. She sounded faintly patronising. ‘It comes from the ancient Saxon name for the estate.’

‘Saxon!’ Liz said. Her family had come over with the Norman King William. Her sniff of disdain left no room for doubt that she considered the Saxons even more barbaric than the present inhabitants of Savernake Forest.

Alison smiled, tossing her golden plait over her shoulder. She looked very Saxon herself with her cream and roses complexion and her blue eyes. There was a look of the late Queen Jane about her, or so I was told. Except that Queen Jane was pious and demure and Alison was never that.

Alison and I were only distantly related, but at Wolf Hall, I had already discovered that we Seymours were all jumbled up together, called cousins regardless of our relationships, abandoned here because there was nowhere else for the sprawling offshoots of the family to go. There were half a dozen of us children and I never worked out how we were connected other than through rejection or loss. There were two babies in the nursery; whose they were I never discovered. Closest in age to me was a boy of seven, but from the lofty heights of ten years, I considered him negligible. Then there was Alison, two or three years older, and above her in the pecking order a sullen youth who boasted that he was soon to be sent away as squire in a knight’s household.

Liz had turned her back as she laid out my linen shifts in the trunk. These had been worked with fine white lace and I saw Alison’s gaze narrow on them and something cold and hard and inimical come into her pale eyes as she looked back at me. She could not have looked less like meek Queen Jane then.

‘Those are very beautiful linens indeed,’ she said.

‘The Lady Mary is dressed as befits the daughter of a queen,’ Liz said.

Alison’s cornflower gaze swept over me. ‘Only beneath her gown,’ she said.

Even though I was only ten years old I was adept at reading what went on in the minds of men—and women—for my fate had often depended upon it. I knew that Alison resented me; that for all my notoriety and poverty, she was jealous because I had fame even though it was not of my own seeking. I was also adept at smoothing over discord so I slid from my chair and went over to her.

‘Would you show me the forest?’ I asked.

She looked scornful. ‘It would take days for you to see the forest.’ Her sharp gaze pinned me down. ‘We are forbidden from venturing there. It is dangerous.’

‘Why?’

There was a sudden silence and I realised that she did not know. She had never asked.

‘It just is.’ Her head was bent. I could not see her expression. Her busy fingers were sorting through the skeins of thread in her workbox. She put aside the ones that drew my gaze—the red, the gold, the blue—and selected the brown and the black. ‘Besides we have no time for idleness here. We clean and cook and sew and tend the garden and dairy and a thousand other things beside.’

‘Are there not servants to do such tasks?’

She gave a snort of laughter. ‘So speaks the Queen’s daughter. No, your highness—’ her mouth curved into a sly little smile ‘—we do not have that luxury here, at least not when Sir Edward is away. In his absence we make shift for ourselves.’

I bit my tongue before I could make reference to Cousin Edward. Already she found me presumptuous. I would do nothing to antagonise her further. Instead, I slipped out of the bedroom when Liz’s back was turned. I knew Alison would tell her she had no notion of where I had gone and if I got lost in the dangerous forest she would not mourn me.

I had not been at Wolf Hall long enough to know which chamber was which, but I ignored the blank doors staring at me and trod softly down the stair. Patterns of light and shade speckled the steps. The wood creaked beneath my feet and I hesitated, but no one came. I was accustomed to sliding away on my own, gone like a ghost. Although I had been hedged about by servants from the earliest age, I still managed to be a solitary child.

To my left was the Great Hall with its sloping stone floor, swept clean this afternoon and smelling sweetly of rushes. Behind me the chapel door, heavy studded oak, forbidding, warning of retribution within. But ahead was the passage and, at the end of it, the door was open into the garden and I was drawn irresistibly outside.

The gardens at Wolf Hall proved a delight, a tangled land of enchantment full of overblown roses and secret paths. Beneath the trees of the orchard I could see a harassed-looking goose girl trying to round up her flock. She was flapping as much as they. Over in the stable yard, I could hear the chink of harness and the murmur of voices. The air was full of scent and heat, and I wandered at will, lost in the pleasure of it.

The garden led to the wood. There was a half-open gate covered in ivy and a path beyond. Naturally, I followed it. I say naturally because I am drawn to the forest. I don’t know why; people say it is a lonely, lawless place, but to me it is a safe haven in which to hide. One path led to another and another, some overgrown tracks, other wide avenues lined by trees that looked like the entrance to a manor far more majestic than Wolf Hall. I went where I willed, following a butterfly here or the sound of water there, running through the dappled shade, discovering new delights.

It was growing dark. I realised it suddenly, knew I had been out for a long time because I was hungry. There was a damp chill settling on my skin. The trees that had enchanted me now threw long shadows. The rustle of the leaves sounded too loud. The air felt still and watchful.

I had no notion which way was the road back.

Distantly, I heard the sound of hoof beats. My hopes lifted, for where there was a horse and rider there might well be a track leading to Wolf Hall. I scrambled through the undergrowth, pushing aside bracken and nettle and grasses, fighting my way towards the noise. With each step the night seemed to close in. The hoof beats were growing louder and, as I stumbled out of the clutch of the thicket and onto a wide avenue, they seemed to fill my head and make my entire body pulse. The earth shook. I fell, dizzy and sprawling, and lay there in terror, waiting either for the shout of fury from the rider or the crush of the horse’s hooves.

Neither came.

The beat in my head eased a little and I dragged myself up onto one elbow and stared into the engulfing shade. Down the long avenue, I could see the white shadow of a horse galloping hell for leather. In the saddle swayed the figure of a woman. She looked as though she were about to fall at any moment. Her cloak billowed out behind her, a fine velvet cloak laced with silver thread, and on her head… But she wore no hat and she had no face because above the line of her collar she had no head, nothing but white bone gleaming in the last light and deep red splashes of blood.

*

There was a jumble of light and voices about me. I was not lost in the forest but lying in a bed. The tip of a feather pricked my cheek and I turned my head against the pillow. There was candlelight. It was night, and I felt hot and sickly and wretched.

‘Already nothing but trouble…’ The lamentation floated far above my head. I recognised Dame Margery’s voice. ‘Only here for two minutes and already we have had to send out a search for her, and pay for a physician—’

‘Pass me the bowl and the cloth.’ Liz this time, sounding snappish. ‘You heard what he said. She has the fever.’

‘She has only herself to blame, wandering around the forest alone! She’s like her father was, reckless and foolish. She does not think about the consequences of her actions.’

‘She is a child who got lost, that is all.’ Liz was starting to sound frayed. I thought it unlikely she would defend my father, whom she had never liked. It was my mother to whom she had been devoted.

‘Babbling about phantom horses and headless women!’ Dame Margery was not so easily appeased. ‘It sounds like witchcraft to me.’

‘It’s fever, no more,’ Liz repeated. I heard the rustle of cloth as she stood. ‘I need fresh water.’

‘I’ll come with you.’ Dame Margery sounded hurried now, as though she did not wish to be left alone with me for fear of enchantment. ‘Alison can watch over her for a moment.’

I had not realised that Alison was there. I opened my eyes a crack. She saw the flicker of movement and immediately she was at my ear.

‘I hope you are satisfied, your highness.’ She smelled of peppermint and sweat. Her whisper was fierce. ‘Thanks to you, I have to share a chamber with the babies now whilst you lord it in here alone. I wish they had not found you!’ Her face hung over me like a big red angry moon.

‘It’s true, there are phantoms in the forest,’ she said. ‘I think it was the black shuck you saw, a huge dog that brings death and madness to all that see it.’

‘It was a horse.’ My lips were dry. I felt hot, feverish, and my head was full of the nightmare but I was still stubborn. If I were to be terrorised by a phantom at least let it be the right one.

‘A horse and a dead woman?’ She laughed. ‘Mayhap is was Queen Anne Boleyn you saw then. If it had not been for your Aunt Jane she would not have lost her head. Maybe she is coming for you in revenge.’

The sound of voices and the lifting of the latch warned her. She scrambled away and when Liz and Dame Margery re-entered the room she was sitting on the window seat all prim and quiet.

‘She sleeps,’ she said sweetly. ‘May I go now?’ And with that she slipped from the room leaving me with my feverish nightmares.

*

Darrell came to me that night as I was tossing and turning in my sleep. Darrell had been my companion, from the earliest time. He was more than a daydream or an imaginary friend. I knew from the start that he was as real as I; that we could talk to each other in images and thoughts and ideas. Such things are natural to children. We do not question. I did not know who he was. I assumed we must be related in some way, such gifts so often connecting members of one family, but I had so many relatives and when I looked around at the sprawling network of my Seymour cousins not one of them felt right. He told me his name was Darrell and even though he knew I was called Mary he called me Cat because he said I was small and fierce. I loved him; it was simple and comfortable because I had always known him. He felt almost like another aspect of myself, closer than close

‘Cat. Are you there?’

The words came to me, as they had always done, as a whisper sliding into my mind, calling me. From earliest childhood it had happened like this, first in blocks of colours and images in my mind and then, as I grew older, in words and emotions.

‘Where are you?’

I ignored him, turning a shoulder as though he was in the room and I was shunning him. When I had been obliged to leave Grimsthorpe, I had called to him for comfort but he had not replied. I had been hurt, needing him and the comfort his presence brought. Yet sometimes it had been like this. He slipped back and forth through my life and sometimes when I needed him, he was gone. This was the first time he had spoken to me since I had left Lincolnshire and it was contrary of me to sulk when he was the one person who could make me feel better.

‘Cat?’

‘I am at Wolf Hall.’ I was short with him.

I felt his puzzlement before it cleared like rain clouds running from the sun.

‘Savernake? Why?’

‘They sent me away again.’ I was sick and feeling sorry for myself. I felt him laugh. Unforgivable.

‘Poor Cat.’

I sent him the mental equivalent of a rude gesture I’d seen the servants make and felt him laughing harder.

‘Such a lady.’

‘Go away.’

He sobered at once, sensing the genuine misery beneath my ill temper.

‘I’m sorry. Is it very bad?’

This time I sent a shrug, a hardy sort of a feeling. It was bravado. He knew I was homesick and lonely and unhappy. He could sense it. I could not keep him out even when I wanted to do so. Yet I also knew that not so many years before he too had been sent from home. I had sensed his loneliness and isolation. I had tried to get him to tell me about it—had he gone to another household for his education? It was the way life ran for the sons of noble households and sometimes the daughters too. He would tell me nothing about himself, though, not then, not ever. He was a mystery to me.

‘There’s the forest to explore. You love the forest.’

The thought felt eager and so like a boy, trying to offer solutions. If only he knew how much the forest had cost me already. Nevertheless, I had softened towards him. I could not help myself. He always made me feel better. There was comfort in his presence and I no longer felt so alone.

‘Yes. I suppose so.’

He sent me a boy’s hug, clumsy, affectionate. I smiled. The warmth of it soothed me, lulling me back into sleep.

‘Goodnight, Darrell.’

‘Goodnight, Cat.’ Goodnight, goodnight…

I slept.