The Plantagenet Mystery
Victoria Prescott
Prologue
December 1550
The house was dark, everyone long since abed, as Sir Thomas let himself out through the side door. He would not be missed, he hoped. He had told his wife he would be sitting up late in his study, reckoning up his accounts ready for the quarter day. He stood for a moment after he had closed the door behind him, in case anyone had been disturbed by the sound of the latch falling into place, then tugged his fur trimmed gown more closely around his body as he set out on his walk. It was a cold night, made colder by the gnawing fear at the edge of his mind. He carried a dark lantern. He knew his way well enough, even in the darkness, and there was no need to advertise his errand to curious eyes.
At the door of the small cottage, a man waited, well wrapped in a dark cloak. Thomas hesitated, fearing to move out of the shadows, until the man shifted his position a little, and he saw that it was the old priest.
‘Good even to you, Father,’ he said, coming forward.
‘A good even, is it? I think it will be a better one when our business is done,’ Father Gervase responded. Thomas only grunted in reply. The priest had said no more than he himself was thinking. He knew his wife would call him a fool if she knew what he had done, and was doing tonight. She already thought him a fool, to spend so much on mere show, not knowing his true intent. He thought maybe she was right. He was not sure, even now, why he had followed this course. Some misguided sense of chivalry, perhaps? A duty and obligation to those who had gone before him here? But the quicker they began, the quicker it would be done. He pushed open the rough wooden door of the cottage and led the way inside.
Closing the door, he unshuttered his lantern and raised it high. There was only one room. A beaten earth floor, with a few rushes strewn. An open hearth, the fire cold for several days now, with a cooking pot and an earthenware plate and bowl beside it. A rough wooden stool, a wooden chest set back against the wall. Little enough to show for the life of this man. Thomas looked towards the pallet in the corner. The old man lay there, hands folded peacefully on his breast. Beside the pallet stood a roughly made coffin, empty, the lid propped against the side.
The priest moved towards the figure on the bed, raising his hand in the sign of the cross, murmuring the Latin phrases. Thomas turned to the chest, going down on one knee in front of it. Setting the lantern down on the floor, he lifted the lid and carefully turned over the contents. A spare doublet and linen shirt. Two books. Not what one would expect to find, but it was well known that this man had learning unusual in a poor man. Thomas knew there might be other things, though, less easily explained, which should not be left for others to find. He lifted the lantern and held it over the chest, feeling with his free hand into the deep shadow in the corners. There was something there, wrapped in a piece of cloth. He lifted it out.
The door rattled and opened. Thomas stood, tucking the cloth wrapped item into his doublet, and turned to face the man who had entered.
‘Ned,’ he greeted his wife’s brother. ‘Do you have what we need?’
‘Ay. A poor beggar that died under the hedge two nights since. There’s none to ask what became of him, or that even knows his name.’
Thomas nodded. There were many such masterless men roaming around the country; there would be more such deaths as the winter took hold.
‘Where is he?’
‘Tom’s with him outside,’ Ned said. ‘He helped me bring him on the bier from the church. We’ll be needing it for ’ Ned glanced towards the still figure on the pallet in the corner.
‘Yes.’ Thomas stood a moment, then said, ‘Come, let us do this.’
Outside, his nephew waited with the bier, face white in the darkness, eyes wide. Thomas regretted that he was there. His own children were safely abed, too young for this night’s business. But it had been Ned’s choice to bring Tom, and nothing to be done about it now. Thomas nodded to the boy, then he and Ned lifted the long, blanket wrapped form that lay on the bier and bore it into the cottage. They laid it in the coffin, on Thomas’s part at least with as much reverence as he could. Ned, always the practical one of the two of them, had brought hammer and nails, and quickly fastened down the lid. Tomorrow, this coffin would be taken from here to the churchyard and buried under the name of the old man who lay on the pallet.
‘The beggar will get a better burying this way,’ Thomas said, as much to convince himself as the others. He was uneasy, fearing they might somehow be impeding the journey of this man’s soul to Paradise, or Purgatory. But Purgatory was mere superstition, he reminded himself. And no wrong they could do this man, or his soul, could equal the wrong Thomas believed they would be doing the other, if they buried him unnamed, in a poor man’s grave.
Ned’s work at the coffin finished, Thomas moved with him to the pallet. The priest stood aside, holding the lantern and watching as they wrapped the body in the blanket and cloak that had made the bedcoverings. Thomas at his shoulders, Ned at his feet, they lifted him and carried him to the bier. They wheeled the bier to the church, Ned pushing it, Thomas steadying it as it tilted and lurched over the rough ground. The priest followed and young Tom came last, stumbling a little, looking around fearfully. Thomas hoped that they went unheard and unseen. They passed no cottages on the way, and no-one was likely to be away from his own hearth at this time on a December night.
Inside the church, Thomas felt safer. There were still candles, even though the saints for whom they used to burn had gone. Ned lit some and set them where the flames would light their work. They laid the body in the place that was ready for it, and the old priest muttered the Latin while Thomas, Ned and Tom stood with heads bowed.
‘What now?’ Ned asked. ‘We cannot leave the place open for all to see.’
‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘I will make all good.’
‘How shall I help?’
‘You cannot. This is my task.’
‘Thomas – ’
‘No, no, Ned. You have done more than I could ask of any brother. But you have not the skill for this. Get the boy away to his bed. I shall do better alone.’
Later, back in his study, there was one more thing Thomas needed to do. He sat at his desk and pulled a sheet of paper towards him. He wrote the date at the top, then continued,
Sir
I write to tell you of the death of hym that you know of
Seven days later, Thomas again sat in his study with the door locked, reading the reply to his letter.
These were my father’s affairs. They are none of mine. Therefore Sir I pray you will not trouble yourself further to inform me of them, and for that thing you wrote of I pray you do with it as you think most fitt.
Thomas refolded the letter and set it aside, then picked up the other item on his desk – the thing he had taken from the chest in the old man’s room. What to do with it? He did not think it was his to keep, yet the man who had the best right to it wanted none of it. And the times were still such that it might be a dangerous thing to keep it where it might be seen. Better, perhaps, to have left it with the old man, but it was too late for that now. Thomas leaned back in his chair, looking around the room. Yes, he thought. That was the thing to do. Fitting that he should, in this last service to him, once more use the craft he had learned from the old man. And fitting too that this – he folded his hand tightly around the item – should in a way still be with the old man. Maybe, Thomas thought, maybe there would come a time when the story could be told openly, without fear. But he did not think it would be in his lifetime.
Chapter One
Rob Tyler put aside yet another letter from an amateur genealogist hoping to find something more interesting tha
n agricultural labourers on his family tree.
‘Another one who thinks his ancestor is the illegitimate child of some noble family, and wants us to prove it, with no evidence whatsoever to go on,’ he said to Bernard, working at the desk opposite. Bernard leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head.
‘I’ve often thought that when I finally retire I could make a comfortable income for myself, tax free of course, concocting fake pedigrees for credulous Americans,’ he said.
‘It’s not just Americans,’ Rob observed. ‘There are just as many enquiries like that from this country.’
‘As I said, a comfortable income. I won’t do it, though.’
‘Why not? Because it would be unethical?’
‘Because it would be hard work,’ Bernard said. ‘I plan to idle my retirement away, reading the classics and doing the Times crossword, with a fine claret at my elbow.’
Was Bernard what he would become, in forty years time, Rob wondered. He was well aware that, still in his twenties, he had all the makings of a true eccentric. Solitary by choice as well as by circumstance, preferring to spend his time in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rather than the twenty-first. Maybe it would be good for him to be thrown out of his comfortable existence and made to interact with the real world. But in the course of financing himself through his Ph.D. as a part time student he had tried working for a bank and a multi-national and could not see himself doing either for the rest of his working life. What one farmer grew in his fields in the sixteenth century had more meaning for Rob than the multi-million pound balance sheets of a modern company.
As he turned to pick up another letter, Rob’s dark brown hair flopped into his eyes. Pushing it back, he briefly considered getting a haircut at lunchtime, then rejected the idea. He had better things to do with his time. He looked at the bundle of documents at the far corner of his desk. He could see a corner of yellowed paper, a few words of handwriting in brown ink. It was tempting to pull the bundle towards him and just take a quick look. But he was being paid to work for the Wynslade County Archives Office now, and there was a pile of correspondence to get through. Rob returned his attention to the letter in front of him.
In his lunch break, Rob was able to get to the papers that had been demanding his attention all morning. Of the Commonweal of Wynneslade; notes on the county compiled in the 1590s by William Amory, a gentleman, scholar and antiquarian. There were perhaps twenty loose pages of varying sizes. Reading and making notes on the whole thing would be hours of work. He would have to photocopy it, to study at home.
Rob skimmed each page before photocopying. According to the catalogue, this bundle contained correspondence and family papers as well as the Commonweal manuscript, and he did not want to pay for copies he did not need.
This county is bounden in part by the sea and has divers rivers which flow through it, the which both yield fish in plenty and a race of mariners than which there is none more skilled in England. The country consists not in mountains and steep valleys but has rather hills, vales and marshland, the which last is most excellent pasture for sheep and cattle. The people likewise are neither too high nor too lowly, but sober, industrious and genial to one and all. The husbandry, whether of wheat and barley, or orchards, or timber of all kinds, is most fruitful, both from the goodness of the soil and the skill of those that till it.
Amory was not exactly an unbiased witness, Rob thought. Still, he could use this in his introduction, and perhaps there would be some more analytical commentary further on. He placed the page on the copier and pressed the green button.
The county has many antiquities, being much inhabited by the Romans. The principal town, or city, is Wynderbury. The Roman walls of this city
Rob read no further. He was not interested in antiquities, Roman or otherwise. He set that page aside and moved on to the next.
George, one of the staff responsible for fetching documents from the strongrooms, came in.
‘Someone wants that in the search room,’ he said, nodding to the pile of papers Rob had stacked by the copier.
‘Let me finish before you take it,’ Rob said. Whoever had asked for it might keep it all afternoon, and Rob could not stay after the office had closed to complete the job.
George shrugged.
‘Makes no difference to me,’ he said. ‘And it won’t hurt him to wait a bit. One of those who thinks everyone should jump when he snaps his fingers, he is.’
Rob speeded up, no longer stopping to look at each page. A few minutes later, his copies were done. He bundled the documents neatly again, and handed them to George.
Halfway through the afternoon, Rob went through to the search room to consult some of the reference books kept there. It was very quiet, the researchers all intent on their work. Julie, the staff member on duty, was taking the opportunity to catch up with paperwork. Rob found the books he wanted and took them to a table in the far corner.
The quiet was disturbed by an altercation at the staff desk. Someone, Rob gathered, was demanding a photocopy of a document. Immediately. The voice was cool, light, with what Rob thought of as a public school accent. Julie replied quietly, but Rob heard her say,
‘I’m sorry, I can’t leave the search room unattended. My colleague will be back in ten minutes or so, then one of us will be able to do it.’
His view cut off by a tall bookcase, Rob could not see the man, but he heard his reply.
‘Oh, God forbid that providing a decent service to the public should take precedence over the Great British Tea Break.’
Rob might have offered to do the copying, although it was not part of his job, but he was not inclined to do any favours for anyone who used that tone to one of the staff. He wondered if this was the man who had wanted the Amory papers; he certainly matched George’s description.
The man must have returned to his seat, for there was no more conversation. Julie, reaching for a file, caught sight of Rob in his corner behind the bookcase and rolled her eyes. She had worked there for years; it would take far more than this man to ruffle her. Rob grinned back, and returned to his book.
On his way out of the search room, Rob glanced at the researchers. He could not tell which of them might have been the one making demands of Julie. Perhaps he had left; Rob had not noted how many people were in the room when he had entered. By the time he reached the office, the incident had faded to the back of his mind. He worked steadily until after five, then tidied his papers away, said goodbye to those of the staff who were still there, and left the office.
Rob set out on foot for the Adult Education Centre. He had no car, and in any case a car would be of no use in Wynderbury's narrow, pedestrian only streets. An autumn wind sent fallen leaves scurrying into corners as he walked through the city. It was late enough that most of the shops had closed, and the day trippers had gone home. The locals, students and visitors had not yet started to throng the pubs, bars and restaurants. Most of the people Rob passed were on their way home from work, city-suited men and women coming from the railway station. Now, with the streets quiet, was a time to appreciate the buildings of the city centre; jettied timber framed buildings, warm red brick and elegant Georgian stucco. If Rob had looked to his left he would have seen Wynderbury's cathedral towering over the jumbled roofs of the medieval streets.
The wind was blowing a spattering rain into Rob’s face and he was in no mood to pause to admire the city's medieval splendours. It was all familiar enough to him. He had not grown up in the city, nor done his first degree there, but had spent most of his life in the county, and had lived in Wynderbury itself for the last three years. He walked across a small green square, once the garden of a monastic house, then crossed over the river Wyn that divided the medieval heart of the city from its Victorian suburbs. The wind strengthened once he was away from the shelter of the close-built streets in the city centre. He lengthened his stride, increasing his speed. A girl had once told him that, with his long legs, he looked like some kind of wadi
ng bird.
‘You’ve got the beak, too,’ she had added, looking at his nose.
Forty minutes later, at least partially sustained by a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea from the cafeteria, Rob was arranging the tables and chairs to his liking in the classroom. It was the first meeting of the new term. Rob did not know what students he would have, but he was not surprised when Emily Finch was first through the door, tugging along behind her the shopping trolley in which she carried around her entire forty-odd years of family history research. Judging by the eager smile on Emily's face, she had made yet another great discovery that she could not wait to share with him. Nothing Rob could say would convince her that every other Finch in the world was not related to her in some way.
Emily might be an enthusiast, but she had good manners. After enquiries as to whether Rob had enjoyed the summer break, she happily moved away to sit down so that Rob could greet the other students as they arrived, and start the class as the clock ticked around to seven. Although this was his third year of teaching this class on family history, he still felt nervous when addressing a new group of students for the first time. Would they be enthusiastic? Argumentative? Bored?
Rob looked down at his notes.
‘I expect you’ve all done the basics,’ he said. ‘Birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns, and so on.’
There was a murmur of agreement. Emily nodded enthusiastically.
‘What I hope to do in this class is show you how you can use other sources in record offices to go further back, and research your ancestors’ lives in depth. It isn’t like using civil registration records, or the census, online, where you can just search for a name. Working with documents is a bit like being a detective, or solving a puzzle. You put together lots of little bits of evidence to build up a picture, or tell a story. ’
The Plantagenet Mystery Page 1
