“Amazing work, Pipes,” Perdita said. “If that’s the missing ring, we now know it still existed in 1864. Only a few years separate Evangeline Barratt and Ada Winchester, so with luck, her diaries might close the gap. Shall we start on those next?”
Piper saved the link, then pushed herself away from the computer. “No, I think we should call it a night,” she said. “I’m too tired. Let’s come at it bright and early in the morning.”
With a slightly disappointed expression, Perdita agreed. “OK, you’re probably right,” she said, stifling a yawn. “So much for our relaxed evening.”
Piper grinned. “Incidentally, you didn’t say where everyone had gone.”
“Alistair and Susan are having dinner with the Merriweathers and will be staying over; Stuart is at a party and Kit’s taken Callum to one of their old haunts.”
“Didn’t he invite us?” asked Piper, sounding hurt.
“Kit or Stuart?”
“Both.”
“Stuart did, but without any real enthusiasm. Kit said there’s a girl at this party that Stuart has been trying to impress for a while, so I think we’d have been a massive hindrance. Kit was a bit torn — he wanted to but I think he also wanted to have a boys’ night, so I told him we didn’t want to intrude,” said Perdita.
Piper’s faced cleared. “Fair enough. I wondered if Callum was avoiding me, you know, after the Kirstin incident.”
“Kit did tell me Callum is nervous about upsetting you again,” admitted Perdita.
“He has no need to be. I’ll have to find him and explain. I should probably apologise for my crazy reaction, too,” said Piper, then yawned again.
“Come on, let’s go back to the tower,” said Perdita. “When Alistair comes home tomorrow, I’ll ask him for the ring.”
“And maybe next week I’ll sort myself out a new phone,” sighed Piper, staring at the blank screen. “This one has been playing up for ages. It keeps vibrating and trying to charge itself even when it isn’t plugged in. Stupid thing.”
Perdita laughed, “It sounds as though it’s possessed.”
“It sounds as though it should be hit with a hammer,” replied Piper.
Chapter Two
“Good morning, my dear,” said Alistair, as he joined Perdita in her office. “Here’s the ruby ring.” He placed a long velvet jewellery box on the desk in front of her.
“Oh, Alistair, thank you,” she said. Perdita cleared a space and reached into her drawer for her roll of jewellery-making tools and an eyeglass. Over Alistair’s shoulder, she saw Kit arrive in his own office and beckoned to him.
“Morning Dad,” he chirped, then grinned at Perdita. “Morning you.” To her horror, Perdita blushed.
“Deborah showed me the extract from the papers describing the ruby ring we think might be the companion to our own. Do you think there could be a false bottom in this ring, too?” Alistair asked.
“In a few moments, we’ll know,” said Perdita as Piper joined them.
Pulling on a pair of protective gloves, Perdita flipped open the velvet box and gazed upon the beauty of the ancient ruby ring. Selecting the steel scribe from her tools, she turned the piece of jewellery over and, with great care, pushed the mechanism to release the catch. Shining a high-powered torch into the interior, she turned it around to face Piper, Alistair and Kit.
“Do you see the inscription in the top half?” she asked, pointing to the tiny letters.
“It’s exquisite,” said Alistair. “If only Mary could have seen it.”
Perdita did not reply; it was a regret she, too, was still trying to come to terms with.
“The Bicton papers say Elinor pressed the bottom plate and it released,” said Piper as Perdita inserted her eyeglass and placed the ring on the safe suede surface of the interior of the jewellery box. Once again, she noticed her hands were trembling with excitement and, had she been on her own, she would have savoured this moment of anticipation for longer but she could feel the desperate silence of the father and son opposite her, not to mention Piper’s eagerness as she leant over Perdita’s shoulder.
Taking a deep breath, she pressed the steel tip down into the base of the ring, applying gentle pressure. To her surprise, it moved and a line appeared down the middle of the golden base. Teasing the metal across with the narrow pointer, it gave easily and both sides slid into custom-made slots revealing an exquisite miniature portrait of a woman in a Tudor headdress, her dark hair visible at the front.
Perdita gasped, gazing at the woman’s image. The dark eyes peered out across the centuries, deep, unfathomable, majestic against the paleness of her skin. The unique pendant around her neck marked her out but, if there was any doubt, at the base of the tiny painting were the initials AB.
Staring at the woman’s face, Perdita felt humbled. She was so familiar from portraits, documentaries and years of studying history but here, seen in an original form, the woman’s features were softer, prettier and her wide, dark eyes twinkled with mischief. Drinking in the beauty of the extraordinary piece of jewellery with its hidden secret, Perdita wiped away an unexpected tear.
“It’s Anne Boleyn,” she murmured and angled it so first Piper could see it, then Alistair and Kit.
“Are you certain?” asked Alistair, struggling to pull on a pair of protective gloves so he could take the ring.
“Look at her necklace,” said Perdita. “It’s the famous ‘B’ pendant that she wore so often in portraits.”
Alistair handed the jewel to Kit, who peered at the minute image.
“Perds, this is unbelievable,” he said, handing it back to her.
“This means the ring mentioned by Elinor Bicton could be the second ruby ring,” said Piper. “It has the correct inscription and another hidden portrait, which proves that when these miniatures were added they were still being treated as a pair.”
Perdita took the ring from Kit and once again placed it on the surface of the box, taking a series of photographs of the interior and uploading them on to her computer so they could see the images in greater detail.
“What do you think it means, Perds?” asked Kit.
“At this stage, I’m not sure. Who would have added pictures of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard? They were cousins but there was a significant age gap between them and I’m not sure if they ever even met.”
“It’s baffling,” admitted Alistair. “I have another meeting so I’ll leave this in your capable hands. Please be sure to return it to the vault each night. We never leave valuables lying around.”
Perdita nodded and returned her gaze to the miniature.
“May I?” asked Kit, leaning over and pointing at the ring.
“Of course,” she replied, placing it in his gloved palm.
Piper moved nearer the monitor and studied the image on the screen, her painter’s eye looking for tell-tale clues as to the possible artist. Perdita moved away from the desk, her hands in the pockets of her short green skirt as she walked around the office, deep in thought.
“Elizabeth I,” she said, after a long silence.
“What about her?” asked Piper, turning to meet her sister’s gaze.
“She owned a very beautiful example of what was known as a Tudor locket ring, which contained dual portraits of herself and her mother, Anne Boleyn. It was mother-of-pearl and, like our rings, was set with rubies. On the top was a letter ‘E’ made from six diamonds, which was overset on a pale blue enamelled letter ‘R’ and there was a pearl on the side. It was hinged to open to reveal the pictures within; would it be beyond the realms of possibility that our ruby ring was the inspiration for the other locket ring?”
“It’s possible,” said Piper.
“But why would Elizabeth have what we now know is Anne of Cleves’s ring?” queried Kit.
“I don’t know,” replied Perdita, “but I feel as though the answer is somewhere staring us in the face and we’re missing it.” Sweeping her hand through her hair, she turned away from Kit and Piper.
When they had found this ring, she had hoped it would provide answers but it had only delivered more questions, more mysteries to solve. Was this a ridiculous and impossible task? They were lucky that their ring had been hidden for centuries and lay undiscovered, but was it possible the second ring could also have survived? They could date it to 1864 but what had happened to it next? She knew Piper planned to work on the second series of documents they had located: the Ada Winchester diaries, but would they be lucky twice in finding these tiny pieces of ancient jewellery?
She wandered to the window and gazed out at the angry sky. How do the rings prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Catherine Howard was the mother of two legitimate Tudor heirs? she thought. Especially if one ring contains a portrait of Anne Boleyn. How could the jewellery be anything other than another piece of interconnected information rather than a means of proof in its own right?
“Perds, what’s wrong?” asked Piper. “I thought you’d be excited.”
“I am,” she said, turning back to look at her sister and Kit, both of whom were watching her with concern. “Very excited, but I’m also frustrated and confused. None of this makes any sense and I’m beginning to worry that it never will.” Neither of them spoke and she understood that this was their concern, too. “Maybe we should give up and spend the rest of our lives in luxurious hiding,” she sighed, staring back at the snow.
The phone on her desk rang and Kit answered it, his voice rising in excitement.
“Perds, we need to pack up the ring and give it to Dad for safekeeping,” he said, his tone urgent.
“Why?”
“Izi and Eveie have found something they think might be important and they want us to meet them downstairs in the boardroom.”
“Now?”
Perdita hurried back to the desk and with great care replaced the covering over the portrait, then clicked the secret compartment back into position before placing the ring back in its box.
“I’ll take it. I’ll see you downstairs in a minute,” said Kit and dashed off.
“Hiya,” said Izabel as Perdita and Piper hurried through the boardroom door. Perdita dumped her laptop bag on a chair. Izabel and Eveie, one of Deborah’s assistants, were examining a spreadsheet that they had placed on the long polished table. Next to this were photocopied pages, numbered like exhibits in a court case. Perdita recognised some of them as letters from the Lady Pamela archive but to her surprise there were others and these, too, were familiar.
“Are these from Lady Kathy Knollys’s Book of Hours?” she asked, pointing to a selection of colour copies at the far end of the table.
“Yes,” replied Eveie, “we wanted to double-check before we showed you what we’d discovered, then we hoped you might be able to explain it.”
“What have I missed?”
Kit hurried through the door and his attention was also caught by the variety of pages the two women had selected.
“Nothing yet,” said Izabel. “Eveie and I have been cross-referencing the data from the letters and we noticed something odd concerning the Book of Hours. Am I correct in thinking it was discovered in the box with the Lady Pamela letters?”
“Yes,” confirmed Perdita. “Whether Granny had known it was part of the cache or whether it was a separate purchase added to the box at random at a later date, we have no idea. Jenny says there will be accounts and a receipt but we haven’t checked it yet. I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“It might be,” said Eveie. “We think the Book of Hours was put there deliberately because it’s connected to the letters.”
“How?” asked Kit. “I’ve spent a long time writing a report on the Book of Hours — did I miss something?”
“You didn’t miss anything — your notes are where we think we’ve found the link,” said Izabel. “It might be nothing but we thought we’d better check.”
“Remind me about the Book of Hours,” said Piper, sliding into the seat beside Izabel. Eveie was on her other side, Perdita and Kit sat opposite.
“The Book of Hours,” supplied Kit, “was a devotional book, a prized object and one owned by women of rank. This one is a remarkable document, partly because of its age — 16th century — but also because of its provenance. It once belonged to Lady Kathryn Knollys, the daughter of Mary Boleyn.”
“We then discovered Kathryn had been part of Catherine Howard’s inner court and was privy to the secret of Catherine’s children being born at the priory on the island of Marquess House’s lake, Llyn Cel,” continued Perdita.
“The book doesn’t stop with Kathryn, though,” added Kit. “She died on 15 January 1569 and her Book of Hours was passed to her second eldest daughter, the infamous Lettice Knollys.”
“Why did it go to her and not the eldest daughter?” asked Piper.
“According to a note in the book, the eldest daughter, Mary Knollys was given a jewelled pendant, Lettice was the next oldest and she inherited her mother’s book,” replied Kit. He examined the pages on the table. “What have you discovered?” he asked.
Izabel pointed to one of the exquisitely illuminated pages, “This lettering,” she said. “The image on the page is a standard depiction of the Virgin and Child, but this detail around the edge appears to have been added afterwards.” She flicked up a hugely magnified image on to the screen at one end of the room and using a laser pen, traced the light down the decorative edging.
Perdita leaned forward to examine it. “I remember Kit telling me that the borders of swirling acanthus style leaves were typical of Ghent and Bruges decorations,” she said, “while the stylised drawings of the figures leans to the Dutch style. I take it the lettering is an anomaly.”
Eveie nodded. “We’ve checked it against as many examples as we’ve been able to find and no other Book of Hours from this period has lettering in the borders. This is why we think it was added later.”
“I don’t understand,” said Piper.
Perdita, however, had moved towards the screen and was examining the tiny letters — with each revelation, her eyes widened in surprise. What she had taken to be unusually shaped flowers or stylised Mediaeval birds were all tiny letters, but rather than running from left to right, they ran from top to bottom. Yet if they were read in sequence, they spelled out a name.
“Artemis,” said Perdita. “It’s one of the codenames in the letters.”
“One of the celestial twins,” said Kit, comprehension dawning on his face.
“Twins?” questioned Piper, exchanging a look of understanding with Perdita. “Is Apollo mentioned anywhere? Artemis was the female deity of the moon and he was her twin, the god of the sun.”
“Yes, here,” said Perdita, tracing her finger along a row of letters that were intertwined with the name Artemis. “This must be a reference to Catherine’s twins: Nicholas and Elizabeth Tudor.”
A shiver of excitement ran down her spine.
“Do you think they would have used such obvious names?” asked Piper.
“They’re not that obvious, though,” responded Kit. “If you put the codenames in the context of the period, only those of noble rank would be educated enough to have knowledge of mythology. There were very few people who would have understood the reference.”
“For us, it means we have another record of them,” said Perdita as she continued to examine the image. “This shows both twins had survived, for a while, at least. Why are there only letters on one side of the image?” She turned back to Izabel and Eveie, “Are there any more of the codenames hidden in the Book of Hours?”
“We think so,” replied Eveie, grinning.
“We’ve made a list of what we’ve found so far,” said Izabel pointing to a folder, “but we thought you’d want to continue from here.”
“Thank you,” said Perdita. “We will, although you’re very welcome to stay.”
“I’d love to but I’m heading home today,” replied Izabel. “We wanted to show you this before we left. Elliot is flying me home this a
fternoon.” She nodded towards the suitcases standing by the door.
“And I’m going, too,” added Eveie. “I haven’t seen Nan for a while.”
Piper looked confused.
“We’re cousins,” explained Eveie.
“It really is a family business, isn’t it?” said Piper.
“This was our last task and now we really do have to dash,” said Izabel, pulling on her coat.
“Please send everyone our love,” said Perdita, hugging them, one after the other. “We hope to be home soon.”
“Good luck with this,” said Izabel.
“Give us a call when you’re back and we’ll update you,” called Kit, who had remained by the screen and waved goodbye. “Ring Perds, she’s in charge,” he added with a wink in Perdita’s direction. She raised her eyebrows at him and he laughed.
“All right you two, get a room,” sighed Piper.
“I wish,” murmured Kit.
“And returning to the matter in hand…” said Perdita, her cheeks flaming. Pulling her laptop on to the table, she flicked it open and brought up a document. “This is the list of all the codenames Izabel and the Marquess House team have come across as they’ve been digitising the Lady Pamela letters they’ve worked on so far. Some are classical with Greek references: Astraea — the star maiden; Hebe — the goddess of youth and cupbearer to the gods and goddesses on Olympus; Clio — the muse of history, Artemis and Apollo — the celestial twins — which must be a reference to the missing heirs. While others are more baffling and, I would guess, give a clue to the person they are supposed to represent: Lady Glass; Lady Holbein, Lady Griffin and one that combines the two: Lady Venus. There are flower names, too.”
“Did you notice these when you were studying the book, Kit?” asked Piper.
“Yes, but to be honest, with everything else that’s been going on, I hadn’t yet made the connection. I thought they were odd — it’s why I made a note of them.”
“Which must have been why Izi and Eveie made the link,” said Piper.
“From what I remember, the names are scattered throughout the text, but why?” said Kit. “I’m going upstairs to grab my laptop, too — it’s got all my rough drafts on it for my report on the Book of Hours. Be back in a bit.”
The Elizabeth Tudor Conspiracy Page 13
