The Last Daughter

by Nicola Cornick

  ‘Only in circumstances like this,’ Jack said dryly. ‘No, she belongs to my grandmother, but she’s a regular visitor here.’

  ‘The residents enjoy having dog therapy,’ Bella said perkily. ‘It lifts their spirits.’

  ‘I came over to see Dick after the talk,’ Jack said to Serena. ‘You may – or may not – remember that back in the day he coached me when I was in the under-18s cricket team. He taught us fencing too. Anyway, I appreciate you’ll want to talk to your grandfather on your own.’ He turned back to Dick and offered his hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure to see you again, sir.’

  ‘Come back again, Francis,’ Dick said, looking up, his pale blue eyes bright. ‘Come back, any time.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘It’s good to talk about the past,’ Dick said vaguely, as though the memory was already slipping away from him. ‘When Pam was alive, we could remember things together. It’s lonely without her. No one else knows the truth.’ He sounded forlorn.

  Serena caught Jack’s eye and glared at him. She didn’t want him witnessing Dick’s vulnerability. She wanted to protect her grandfather from his pity.

  ‘The truth about what, Grandpa?’ she asked.

  ‘History,’ Dick said, fretful now. ‘Leopards and lilies. What happened in the tower.’ For a moment Serena thought she saw a gleam of slyness in his eyes, as though he knew something she did not and was teasing her, then it faded away again. ‘Can’t talk about it,’ Dick said. His chin sank onto his chest and he lapsed into silence.

  Once again Serena saw Jack watching them and glimpsed sympathy and understanding in his eyes rather than the pity she resented. She looked away from him, feeling a pang of loss. When her grandmother Pamela had died from cancer, fourteen years before, she knew Dick had been profoundly, grievously lost and lonely, and only his innate strength and determination had kept him going. Despite her grandmother’s brusqueness, Serena had recognised then that Pam and Dick had had a strong bond.

  Then Caitlin had disappeared and it was as though the shock together with the unhealed loss of his wife had come together in one swift, overwhelming blow to rob Dick of his health.

  Serena took her grandfather’s hand. It was going to be even more heartbreaking telling Dick about Caitlin now. She wanted to cry. She wanted Jack to go before he witnessed it.

  ‘I’ll see you out, Mr Lovell,’ Bella said, with bright incongruousness. ‘Thanks for calling.’

  Serena gave Luna a final pat. The dog trotted off after Jack, her paws silent on the thick pile of the carpet.

  ‘I’ll go and make us some tea, Grandpa,’ Serena said. ‘Shall we have some chocolate chip cookies?’ She kissed his cheek, adjusting the rug more securely over his lap against the chilly little breeze that had sprung up. Her grandfather smelled faintly of mothballs and more strongly of soap. Serena put her arms about him and hugged him close. His cheek felt cool and rough against hers but his grip was still firm. She felt a huge rush of love for him and a sense of loss, as she always did, when she remembered how different he had been before the illness. It was another world, another time.

  ‘Serena,’ he said, and the hot tears burned her eyes as she realised that today he recognised who she was. He’d seemed to know Jack too. Perhaps it was one of his more lucid days.

  She released him and straightened up, walking back through to the kitchen. Everything in the flat was spotless and curiously lifeless. When Dick had moved to the retirement village her parents had persuaded him to buy new, practical furniture for his new home. The result was shiny and without character, Serena thought, in contrast to all the old bits and pieces she had seen at the manor that morning. She felt a pang for that scattered collection of furniture, books, ornaments and other items that Dick and Pamela had gathered over the years, each with their connections and memories, their story to tell. There was so little left.

  An exception was a couple of Dick’s paintings which had hung in the manor house and were now on his living-room wall. Whilst the kettle boiled, Serena went back into the living room to look at them. The first was a fairly conventional view of the ruins of Minster Lovell Hall, a sleepy summer watercolour of the meadows and the river beyond. It looked familiar, safe and unthreatening. The other was different and Serena had always found it faintly unsettling, though she could not explain why. It was a pencil sketch of a huddle of grey stone buildings around a courtyard. A tall tower topped the left-hand corner and a church spire peeked over the wall at the back. A river lapped at the retaining wall where a small boat bobbed in the shallows. There was a dovecote across the fields to the right and it was this that gave the clue to the location. It was Minster Lovell Hall before it was a ruin. She had always wondered whether Dick had drawn it from imagination or based on an old print he’d found. His study had been packed with ancient books, maps and pictures.

  On the table were some more recent pencil sketches of flowers, a fat robin and a beautiful soaring sketch of a falcon in flight. Even with the worsening of his dementia, Dick’s artistic talent had not deserted him. The strokes were shakier but Serena thought he still had more of a gift than she had ever possessed. The nurses had told her that this was quite common; whilst people might lose their memories and to a degree their ability to care for themselves or understand normal modes of behaviour, often their skills and talents remained with them, whether it was a facility with foreign languages, an ability to recognise plants or a talent for art.

  The kettle hissed and clicked into silence and Serena went back into the kitchen to warm the pot. Whilst the tea brewed, she stood looking out at her grandfather nodding in his sleep on the sheltered patio and thought about their family history. It had been in her mind since that morning, conjured up perhaps by her visit to the hall. She knew so little about where either of her grandparents had come from originally or much about their lives before they moved to Minster Lovell. It was odd that both of them, in their different ways, had been interested in history and yet had not spoken about their own pasts. Perhaps Polly would be able to tell her more. She would ask her when she rang later.

  When she came back out onto the patio with the teapot, mugs and the cookies, Dick was still dozing in his chair but he woke when he saw her and smiled gently. He seemed to have no recollection that she had been there minutes before but he seemed pleased to see her and even more pleased to see the biscuits.

  The tears pricked Serena’s eyes. She couldn’t begin to imagine how she could tell Dick that they had found Caitlin’s body. It felt impossibly cruel and she remembered how devastated he had been when her twin had disappeared. Yet to not tell him felt wrong and untruthful. And perhaps he simply would not register it. Already his smile was fading and his eyes seemed to reflect the blankness of someone who had forgotten what they had been speaking of a moment before. Dick’s memory, once so sharp and incisive like the man himself, was now a flimsy thing that slipped away without notice, leaving him a shell of the man he had been.

  Serena poured strong tea into his favourite mug, which featured a knight in full medieval armour. She’d bought it for Dick as a birthday present years ago when she’d visited Warwick Castle on a school trip. She could still remember how inordinately pleased he had seemed when she gave it to him. Now his gaze dwelt on it for a moment before he took his first mouthful of tea.

  ‘Grandpa,’ Serena said. Her voice sounded rough in her own ears. ‘I’ve got some bad news.’ She looked at Dick, who was watching her with his faded blue gaze. ‘They’ve found Caitlin’s body. I’m so very sorry… She’s dead.’

  There was a silence, but for a blackbird calling plaintively from the yew tree. Dick did not answer. Serena wondered if he had heard her or if the words had made no sense to him. There was no way of telling. She swallowed the tears that thickened her throat.

  ‘Caitlin,’ Dick said, and Serena put her hand over his.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ she said again.

  Dick turned his hand
over so that he held hers properly, his calloused palm rough against hers. It felt infinitely comforting and yet infinitely sad at the same time.

  ‘It was the lodestar,’ Dick said suddenly.

  Serena was so surprised that she put her mug down with a snap, spilling some drops of tea on the patio.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Grandpa – I don’t understand.’

  Dick’s gaze had the same opaque quality that Serena had seen there earlier but this time the sense of distance felt different, as though he was looking back a long way, into the past, further than the eye could see.

  For a moment his fingers tightened around hers. ‘I should have warned you,’ Dick said. ‘I should have told you both.’

  ‘Told us about what?’ Serena said.

  ‘Where we came from.’ Dick sounded irritable, as though she was being deliberately obtuse. ‘I should have explained, but you would never have believed me.’ He sounded sad. ‘People tell me I don’t remember well,’ he added. ‘But I remember my childhood right enough. I know who I am.’

  Serena waited, afraid that if she questioned him, she might break this tenuous link Dick had forged with his past.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Dick said. He seemed suddenly agitated, pushing aside the rug that covered his legs, trying to struggle to his feet.

  ‘Grandpa!’ Serena jumped up, afraid that he might fall. ‘I’ll fetch whatever you need,’ she said. ‘Tell me where to find it.’

  She waited, watching the agonising struggle behind Dick’s eyes as he groped to keep hold of the thought that even now was slipping away from him. ‘The pictures,’ he said at last, ‘fetch the pictures,’ and she watched the tension leave his body as he slumped back down into his chair and closed his eyes.

  Serena hesitated, hoping he might say more, but Dick sat still now with his face tilted towards the faint warmth of the early spring sunshine. ‘The sun will grow stronger again,’ he said, and a small smile touched his mouth. A moment later he was asleep.

  Serena went back inside and picked up the drawings on the coffee table and studied them. She wasn’t sure whether these were the pictures Dick had meant but other than those on the wall they were the only ones she could see. The fat robin looked cute and Christmassy but there was a different quality to the others if she looked beneath the faltering pencil lines. The hawk, for example, was a fierce predatory creature whose chest was white, but whose wings were flecked with black and grey. Beneath it in shaky capital letters Dick had spelled out ‘GYR’, which Serena thought must be for gyrfalcon The flowers in the other picture were painted in splashes of bright yellow, with dark green leaves, and again beneath the picture there was a title. This one read simply: PLANTAGENET.

  Chapter 12

  Anne

  Ravensworth, 1475

  By the time that I was fifteen I was wanting my own household to govern and space to grow and spread my wings. My mother’s matchmaking had proved most successful in the past few years and two of my sisters were wed and were already mothers; Elizabeth, who married William Parr, had named her first daughter for me and I stood as godmother to her. Anne Parr was a beautiful child, placid and happy. When she first closed her tiny fingers around mine, I felt a sweetness flower within me that I had never experienced before, an ache that was both joyful and poignant in the same moment. Yet, I also felt left behind. I had been married for far longer than my siblings yet somehow it was as though everyone had forgotten I was Lady Lovell.

  Francis remained with the Duke of Suffolk in those fallow years that I spent at Ravensworth. Frideswide wrote that he was starting to familiarise himself with his estates, the vast parcels of land that he possessed across the length and breadth of the country. Yet he too was still in his minority and the King seemed happy for that to be the case, for he was using the income from Francis’ inheritance to pay his own debts. Frideswide wrote of Francis’ fury that Edward had assigned the income from their grandmother’s lands to his wine merchant.

  Francis resents paying off the entire court’s drinking bills, she wrote. Yet his loyalty will never falter. He is to accompany the King to France, being eager to prove himself on campaign.

  This news troubled me. Not so much the King’s extravagance at Francis’ expense but the thought that he was going away to fight and that I might be widowed before I was a wife.

  ‘It is the way of men,’ mother said, as we sat that night in the solar, the firelight playing across the stone floor and leaping up the arras to illuminate the scenes of hunting and hawking in blood red and black. ‘If there is not a war to fight, they will provoke one.’

  I looked at her sitting there placidly and incongruously with her needlework. If she had been a man, she would have been first in the field.

  ‘Why the King needs to invade France is a mystery to me,’ I said. The chess board was laid out in front of me but I had no one to play against so I was pitting the pieces against one another. ‘Surely he had enough with which to occupy himself in his own kingdom?’

  Mother sighed. ‘The King has a claim to the French throne as well as that of England,’ she said. ‘It is important that he should assert it.’

  ‘Important for whom?’ I asked.

  ‘I do not know why you are forever questioning,’ mother said, with a snap. ‘It does no good.’

  ‘I am curious, that is all,’ I said. ‘You want me to have the Neville ambition. It does not come without understanding.’

  Mother laid aside the needlepoint. Her embroidery, unlike mine, was very fine.

  ‘Men will always be looking to aggrandisement,’ she said. She beckoned to one of the maids to pour her a cup of wine from the pitcher and one for me as well. This was unusual and an honour that had only come in the last few months since my fifteenth birthday.

  ‘Your Francis, for example,’ she said. ‘I hear he has already been engaged in more lawsuits than a man can count in order to secure his lands and he is not yet of age.’

  ‘That is different,’ I argued hotly. ‘It is only because the terms of his inheritance are so complicated. To him it is a matter of law and honour that he should pursue them.’

  ‘Men speak of law and honour and all manner of high-flown virtue when it suits their purpose,’ mother said with a cynicism I had not heard from her before. ‘You would do well to hear it, note it and judge by their actions not their words.’

  I filed that piece of advice away for future reference and watched as she refilled her cup and drank again. It was unusual to see her like this; there was some discontent in her this night that I did not understand.

  ‘So, if men seek out conflict,’ I said, ‘what do women do?’

  She gave me a sour smile. ‘They marry and beget children,’ she said. ‘And when they are too old to do that, they are forgotten.’

  I wondered whether that was what ailed her. Mother was over forty years old by now and had been widowed for four. She was still a handsome woman yet the King had not suggested she remarry and it seemed no one had sought her hand. This, I thought, might well have been because of her cursed Neville temper, which was well known. I was not sure any man might find the bargain worthwhile, but I had the sense not to say this.

  I also wondered whether the sight of all her children marrying and the arrival of the first grandchildren, far from pleasing her, had actually embittered my mother and made her feel the passing of the years. Like Francis, my brothers had gone to train in other households after father had died and now my elder brother Richard would soon take up the governance of Ravensworth.

  ‘Women can have power in other ways,’ I said. ‘There is the church, and—’

  Her laughter cut across my words. She raised the cup in salute. ‘Can you see me as a nun, Anne?’

  I went across to her and knelt down beside her. ‘There is the court,’ I said. ‘You enjoyed our time at Westminster.’

  Her mouth turned down at the corners. Down went the cup with a snap that made the delicate gold quiver and bend. ‘My se
rvices are not required there,’ she said. ‘The Queen has no need for me.’

  I understood then that she had asked and been rebuffed. Edward, for all his talk of kinship and reconciliation had not wanted the meddling widow of a traitor in the heart of the court. The Queen certainly had no reason to like mother either. Her star had fallen, her time was gone.

  ‘That may change,’ I said, trying to comfort her. ‘The wheel of fortune always turns.’

  ‘That is superstition,’ she grumbled, sliding down in her chair, ‘or if not that, then it is treason.’

  I shrugged, getting up from her side, irritated that she had rebuffed my attempts to offer solace. I thought she was sorry for herself, or in her cups, or both.

  ‘You should pray for Francis,’ she said suddenly, her fingers flicking impatiently through the little book of illuminated manuscripts on the table at her side. I loved that book. It had been created for my grandfather at Rievaulx Abbey, and the pictures of the lay brothers labouring in the fields and the monks at their prayers were delicate and jewel-bright in their colouring. It was a far cry from the energy and violence of the hunting tapestries.

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  ‘Should he die and leave you a virgin widow,’ mother said, ‘a nunnery might be the best place for you since you are so keen to extol the religious life.’

  I was so shocked and hurt in that moment that I could have dashed my own wine in her face. The urge to strike back – to tell her that I was young and comely and clever, and would find another husband where she could not – was so strong. Then I saw the glitter of tears in her eyes and she held out her arms to me and I went into them. She smelled of wine and sweat and heat and a heavy perfume that could not conceal any of the other smells, and I pitied her then.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said, against my hair. ‘Forgive me, Anne. I am old and sour tonight, and when the north wind blows my bones ache.’ She eased back and looked me in the eye. ‘You should know,’ she said fiercely, ‘that if you need me, I shall always be by your side. You are my daughter and I love you. Sometimes I am fearful for you, that is all. You are so curious, so questioning. I do not know why it scares me but it does.’