The Phantom Tree

by Nicola Cornick

  Here, though, was something she did recognise, a parlour, with another wide grate and panelled walls, like all the other rooms empty and desolate. She had thought there would be furniture. She had thought there would be something, perhaps even something recognisably belonging to Mary Seymour, something she remembered. She realised she had been too optimistic.

  Darker patches on the corridor walls showed where pictures had hung. At the end was a stair, turning upwards into the gloom. Adam started to climb it and Alison followed. The oak treads were irregular and creaked alarmingly beneath her feet. The handrail was smooth under her fingers. Mary had walked here yet she could feel no echo of her presence. No voice called out to her. There was nothing but a chill in the air and the scent of decay.

  ‘It’s very quelling, isn’t it?’ Adam had joined her on the landing. ‘Though it could be stunning again. If they did decide to sell—’ He broke off.

  ‘It would probably be bought by a developer,’ Alison finished for him, ‘and turned into flats.’

  Adam laughed. ‘There’s not much romance in your soul.’

  ‘There never was,’ Alison said. An odd silence fell between them, as though they were both remembering. Glancing at Adam, she saw his expression was pensive.

  ‘I thought the house would still be furnished,’ Alison said, more to break the silence than for any other reason. ‘It feels so… abandoned.’

  ‘It is,’ Adam said quietly. ‘That is exactly what it is.’

  Alison glanced around the landing. In the fading light she could see faint traces of painted walls: vines, leaves and flowers entwined. The floor sloped quite dramatically towards two doorways standing side by side.

  ‘The haunted bedroom.’ Adam’s voice was dry. ‘The room where Wild Will Fenner murdered his newborn child. Allegedly.’

  ‘Allegedly?’ Alison said. The doorway of the room yawned open. She felt no compulsion to step inside, rather a dark dread and a sense of utter repugnance returning.

  ‘The legend goes that a midwife was summoned in the middle of the night,’ Adam said, ‘and although she was blindfolded she swears she was brought to Middlecote, where she helped at the birth of Will Fenner’s child, but as soon as the babe was born, he threw it on the fire.’

  Alison shuddered. ‘How utterly grotesque. Why would he do such a thing?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘He was a violent brute. It was his mistress’s child so perhaps he wanted to be rid of it. It’s said he bribed the midwife to silence but she reported him.’

  ‘He should have hanged,’ Alison said.

  ‘It was unproven,’ Adam said. ‘Will Fenner denied it and because the midwife had been blindfolded they could not establish that it was definitely Middlecote she had been taken to. Plus, the judge was one of Will’s cronies, our old friend Hopton. It’s said he protected Will Fenner from the law in return for being granted Middlecote on Will’s death.’

  There was a cold pain in Alison’s head, an ache that made her ears buzz. She found she was standing on the threshold of the room with no real idea of how she had got there. She could see a fire leaping in the grate, hear screams and smell the stench of burning. A baby, consigned to the flames.

  The nausea rose in her throat. Suddenly the protective barriers she had erected in her mind were blown apart. It was as though she could feel Arthur in her arms, smell the baby scent of him, see his eyes opening, that deep lavender blue that was the same as hers… Had he died as a child too? How could she ever know? It was all so vivid and so terrifyingly painful that she staggered.

  ‘Ali?’

  Adam’s hand was on her arm. She could hear concern in his voice. She turned towards him, the vulnerability making her want to fling herself against him for comfort, the last wretched dregs of pride and self-preservation holding her back.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said, and did not recognise her own voice.

  Adam led her back across the landing to a window seat. It was un-cushioned but she sank gratefully down onto the hard wood.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, putting a hand up to her forehead. ‘I just felt a bit… odd… for a moment.’

  ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet,’ Adam said. ‘Do you need some water?’

  ‘No,’ Alison said. ‘I’m fine. I just need to get away from that room, I think.’ She shuddered. ‘What a vile man and a vile story.’

  Adam stood up and offered her his hand to help her rise. She took it, expecting him to let her go once she was on her feet, but instead he led her out onto the landing as though she were a small child, his fingers curled about hers. It was unexpected and comforting and Alison felt some emotion stir inside her and warmth unfurl. She wasn’t accustomed to holding anyone’s hand. She wasn’t sure how to do it. It felt awkward. She never took help; always she managed on her own.

  She waited for Adam to precede her down the stair but he stopped on the landing, turning more fully to face her, leaning against one of the newel posts.

  ‘Why did you come here today, Ali?’ he said. ‘What did you really hope to find?’

  Alison felt a shiver go through her at his tone. It felt so intimate, here in the falling shadows.

  ‘I thought there would be something left,’ she said slowly. ‘Some sort of clue…’

  ‘To Mary Seymour?’ Adam had understood even before she had quite articulated the thought in her own mind.

  ‘I hadn’t realised that there was nothing here,’ Alison said. Hopelessness enveloped her all of a sudden. It had been stupid to come. There was nothing to find here. Her hold on the past, on Arthur, had become so tenuous it hung by a thread. Or perhaps there was no hold at all and her hope was mere wishful thinking.

  ‘It must be very important to you,’ Adam said, ‘to send you down here on the off chance of discovering something.’

  ‘I’m very tenacious when it comes to my family-tree research,’ Alison said, ‘and Mary is key to that.’ She tried to keep her voice light but the words sounded hollow in her ears. She tried again. ‘Having no living family, it’s particularly important to me to find out where I came from.’

  Adam seemed to accept that and she felt a rush of relief as she saw him nod. ‘Yeah, I can understand that,’ he said. ‘We all need to feel we belong. I imagine…’ He paused. ‘Well, it must get lonely sometimes being on your own.’

  Alison tried not to flinch. That hurt her, perhaps more than it should. Once, for a short while, she and Adam had been together, united, sharing everything. Except that she had never really shared the truth of herself with Adam or anyone, except Diana. She could not. They would think she was certifiable.

  The silence sat oddly between them, too intimate for her comfort. It felt as though the air was charged, as though they were too attuned to each other’s thoughts and reactions.

  ‘Anyway, what about you?’ Alison deliberately broke the moment. ‘Why did you come back?’ She watched his face but he was impassive, giving nothing away. Adam had always had that ability even when he had been young. It had infuriated her.

  ‘I think you’ve got serious doubts about the book,’ she said suddenly. ‘I think you really do believe the portrait is Mary’s and you came here to check something out.’

  Adam folded his arms. ‘Are you done?’ he asked, very politely.

  ‘No,’ Alison said. ‘You mentioned earlier that you had discovered some sort of reference to Mary Seymour being here. What was it?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Adam said. ‘You’re the Seymour expert.’

  Alison hesitated. She knew she had to give him something to encourage him to tell her more. Equally, she could not give away too much. It felt like a game of bluff and double bluff.

  ‘My information says that Mary Seymour grew up at Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire in the household of the Duchess of Suffolk,’ she said, ‘but that when The Duchess fled abroad during the Marian persecutions, Mary was sent to Wolf Hall.’

  Adam raised his brows. ‘Wolf Hall? Really? But was it not falling into disrepair durin
g that period?’

  Alison remembered the rain dripping through the roof of the solar in the last winter.

  ‘That doesn’t mean it was uninhabited,’ she said. ‘Mary left there in 1560.’

  Adam was staring at her. ‘I would love to know where you got this from,’ he murmured.

  ‘I’ll show you one day,’ Alison said recklessly. ‘It’s your turn,’ she added.

  Adam nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘There is a reference to “the late Queen’s daughter” living here at Middlecote in 1562. I found it in a letter to William Cecil from Agnes, Lady Fenner.’

  ‘The late queen would have been Katherine Parr,’ Alison said. ‘There was no one else who could be described in that way.’

  She put out a hand and grabbed the banister to steady herself. It felt as though the world was spinning too fast all of a sudden. The smooth wood slid beneath her fingers like time running backwards.

  ‘Steady.’ She could hear Adam’s voice. ‘I thought you said you were okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Alison said. ‘Just excited to find there is other evidence to support the idea that Mary Seymour was at Middlecote.’

  ‘Just because Mary might have been here later doesn’t mean that Anne Boleyn never visited Middlecote,’ Adam though to himself. ‘I wondered whether it was true or whether that was just Hopton talking the place up again.’

  ‘A for Agnes,’ Alison said. Then, when he looked at her. ‘Lady Fenner? They could have belonged to her rather than Anne Boleyn.’

  ‘I know,’ Adam said. ‘But there was the portrait, and the box. My agent got hold of the idea and spoke to the TV people and everyone was really excited about a new painting of Anne Boleyn. Suddenly the pressure was on.’ He ran a hand impatiently through his hair. ‘Hell, it’s my responsibility in the end, though, and my scholarship. I should have checked it more thoroughly but there were time constraints and I made a judgement call. A bad one, it feels now.’

  ‘So you came back here to check on something that had been troubling you,’ Alison said.

  ‘You’re too acute.’ Adam scowled at her. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’ He took a small flashlight out of his pocket. ‘This way.’

  The winter light had been fading as they talked and now Alison realised that the stairwell was dim and full of grey shadows. Suddenly, it was easy to believe that the house was haunted. The inadequate electric light would flicker out, a wind would rise, shrieking along the corridors, and Mary would glide out from one of the darkened doorways, the box clutched to her chest…

  ‘Mind your step.’ Adam’s voice recalled her, shivering, to reality. ‘There are raised beams across the doorways here.’

  Looking down, Alison realised that she needed to step over a blackened beam in order to enter the narrow corridor Adam was indicating. She felt claustrophobic all of a sudden; it was a panicky tightness in her chest that made her want to turn and run. Instead, she tried to concentrate on what Adam was saying and to block out the oppressive sense of fear.

  ‘This was known as the “Dames Corridor”,’ Adam said. ‘The ladies of the house had their chambers here. If Mary Seymour had lived at Middlecote, chances are she had one of these rooms.’

  There was no electricity here. Bare wires hung from the ceiling and there was a scent of damp and decay in the air.

  ‘It would have been a great deal more pleasant back in the 1560s,’ Adam said, watching her face in the torchlight. ‘At least I assume so. We know Lady Fenner had her chamber here, and her daughter Eleanor too, before she married and moved away.’

  ‘Will Fenner had a sister?’ Alison said.

  ‘And a half-brother,’ Adam said. ‘Thomas. He was the son of Will’s father’s mistress.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there was much love lost there,’ Alison said.

  ‘Their lives took very different courses,’ Adam said. ‘Come in here.’ He gestured with the torch and Alison stepped over the threshold. ‘I’m not sure which of the ladies had this room as the records don’t specify,’ Adam said, ‘but this was where we found the portrait—and the box that was in it.’

  A blinding wave of familiarity hit Alison as she walked into the centre of the room. She could smell the scent of sweet rushes on the floor and lavender from the blankets of the great wooden bed that stood behind her. She could see the benches around the walls, highly polished to a dazzling shine, the fire blazing in the hearth, the tirewoman folding clothes into the chest.

  This was Mary’s chamber…

  She blinked and the image vanished and the room was cold and dark again. Adam was standing by the fireplace, shining the torch up into the chimney.

  ‘The box was hidden up there,’ he said. ‘The one in the portrait. There’s an opening in the wall about two feet deep. The surveyors found it when they were checking the chimneys.’

  ‘A chimney isn’t the greatest place to hide a wooden box,’ Alison said. ‘It sounds like the sort of place someone would put a witch bottle.’

  Adam gave her a sharp look. ‘You know about those? Yes, that’s exactly it. It was certainly odd; as though it had been hidden in a hurry.’

  ‘That’s fascinating,’ Alison said. Her heart was racing again. Was it too far-fetched to imagine that Mary had hidden the box there for her to find, that there was a message in it for her? Adam had said before that there had been artefacts in the box. If only she could discover what the were…

  Leave word for me… Make it a secret… Keep it hidden… She was back in the coach with Mary, hearing the rain thundering on the leather roof, clutching Mary’s cold hands in desperation. She had known she was going to run, that she had so little time, that she would need help to find Arthur again. Pushing aside those memories took enormous effort but she dragged her mind back to the present, raising a hand to rub her fingers over the rough masonry of the fireplace, smelling the old soot and dead burning.

  ‘Where is the box and its contents now?’ she asked.

  ‘At London University, undergoing analysis,’ Adam said. He straightened, running a hand over the nape of his neck.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ll level with you, Ali. I know you want to find out more about Mary Seymour and you think the box and the portrait are linked to her. It really matters to me whether or not you’re right. It’s important. Like I said earlier, if I’ve made a mistake I’d rather know than build my career on a piece of historical misidentification.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alison said, ‘I do understand.’ They were standing very close together now. For a second she was confused by his proximity, distracted. She wanted to help him. The impulse was strong. Yet she had to remember that finding Arthur was her overwhelming need.

  She needed access to the portrait and to the box. Adam could provide that. She had to persuade him to help her. Yet she could not tell him how she knew the things she did or why she needed to know. She never had told him the truth about herself and she never could. She felt as though she was on a knife’s edge.

  ‘I can’t offer you any proof,’ she said. ‘All the stuff I know is hearsay or… or… family myth. You know, stories that have been told for centuries and may have a grain of truth in them.’

  Adam rubbed the nape of his neck. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I tell you what. We’ll work on this together. You tell me everything you know about Mary Seymour and I’ll find out if it’s true or not.’

  Alison’s heart leaped. ‘I want to see the box,’ she said quickly, before she lost her nerve, ‘and all the contents.’

  Adam’s gaze held hers. It felt as though he could see far more than she was telling, that he sensed her desperation.

  ‘All right,’ he said, after a moment, ‘I’ll get it for you in return for all the information you can give me.’

  Alison was so relieved and excited that she hugged him, regretting it almost immediately when she felt Adam recoil. His hands were on her arms, holding her away from him, putting space between them.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, morti
fied, ‘I was just so pleased—’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Adam said. ‘You took me by surprise.’ He spoke slowly and there was a tone in his voice that made her look up. There was heat in his eyes, and desire, swiftly banked down. Alison’s stomach dropped. Suddenly it felt as though there was no air at all in the stairwell.

  Adam’s phone buzzed and he reached for it, turning away from her. ‘Excuse me.’

  Alison felt firmly excluded. ‘Hi, Mum,’ she heard him say. Then: ‘As though I could forget.’ There was affection as well as faint exasperation in his tone. He shot Alison a sideways glance. ‘No, I’m just finishing up here. See you soon.’ He snapped the phone closed. ‘Family dinner,’ he said. ‘They’re wondering where I am.’

  ‘People with happy families so often don’t realise how lucky they are,’ Alison said. She thought of his exasperation at being nagged and there was a fizz of anger and resentment in her stomach.

  ‘Woah!’ Adam said. ‘Where did that come from?’ He slid the phone back into his pocket. ‘I can assure I realise just how…’ he said, hesitating. Then: ‘Fortunate I am.’

  He did not sound angry, only thoughtful, as though he had read more than she had intended into her words.

  ‘Sorry,’ Alison said, feeling ungracious. ‘The envy of the orphan, I suppose.’

  Adam didn’t reply. He turned his back to her and set off towards the stairs. ‘Come on,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘we’d better get out of this house of horrors before it gets dark.’

  Alison followed the wavering torchlight down the corridor and out onto the landing. It was dark now. The shadows curled like serpents around the newel posts and slid towards them across the bare boards.

  ‘Where’s Monty?’ Alison asked. ‘I need a guard dog.’

  Adam laughed. ‘He’ll be waiting for us downstairs,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t like the place much.’