The Phantom Tree

by Nicola Cornick

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ Alison said. ‘He was sort of bequeathed to me, but my flat isn’t suitable for him and I’m not sure…’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I don’t think he was meant for me, anyway.’

  Richard didn’t ask her what she meant. He smiled. ‘Animals often know.’ He followed her out to the car where Hector graciously deigned to be picked up and carried into the shop. Once there, he inspected the premises carefully, looked thoughtfully at Monty, who wagged his tail, then wandered through to the office door and disappeared.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Alison said, ‘I hope he’ll be all right.’

  ‘The garden is walled,’ Richard said.

  ‘But cats can climb.’

  ‘I think Hector knows exactly what he’s doing,’ Richard said. He gestured to the office. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea? I know you have to get back to London but if you have time…’

  ‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ Alison said. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have any of Hector’s belongings. Everything happened rather oddly. I’ll ring Hugo Green—that’s Diana’s nephew—and ask if he could drop anything of Hector’s off with you.’

  ‘Adam mentioned that you were hoping to see your friend but that she had died last night,’ Richard said. The kettle was starting to buzz. He took two mugs from a neat little antique cupboard and placed them on the tray. ‘I’m so very sorry. That must have been quite a shock for you.’

  ‘The whole day has been completely bizarre,’ Alison said, with some understatement. She felt again a wash of confusion and puzzlement. She had seen Diana. She knew she had. She could not have imagined the entire episode.

  ‘I’m going to need some time to think it all through,’ she said.

  ‘And to talk about it, I’m sure,’ Richard said, adding water to the mugs. ‘Take a seat on the window cushion. Just shove those papers out of the way. Adam can help if you want to talk about it with him,’ he added. ‘He’s good at that sort of thing these days.’

  ‘He told me about his father,’ Alison said. ‘I’m sorry.’ She took the mug from Richard. ‘I imagine you and he were close friends. How hideous for you all.’

  ‘Peter Hewer and I only met when we were in our twenties,’ Richard said, opening a packet of biscuits and offering one to her. ‘But we immediately connected as friends. You know how sometimes you meet someone and it feels as though you have known them for ever?’ He raised a brow. ‘I sometimes felt we could not have been closer even if we had been blood relations. It was a bad time when we lost him.’ He sat down in the wing chair opposite her. The cushions gave a protesting squeak. ‘I must get this thing reupholstered,’ Richard said vaguely.

  ‘Did Adam tell you about us?’ Alison asked. She hadn’t meant to discuss Adam but it felt awkward not acknowledging their relationship when she was here with Adam’s godfather.

  Richard’s eyes twinkled. ‘He said you were a friend, which is a step forward, isn’t it?’

  Alison blushed. ‘I suppose we were a bit antagonistic when we bumped into each other here that time,’ she said.

  ‘Just a bit,’ Richard said mildly. ‘Adam didn’t mention it,’ he added, ‘but I realised who you were. You were always…’ he paused as though trying to find the right word ‘… important in his life.’

  Alison was startled. ‘Me?’ she stammered. ‘How? I mean surely he didn’t tell anyone about me at the time—’ She stopped.

  ‘I knew he had had a very serious relationship when he was very young,’ Richard said, ‘and that it had ended badly.’ He looked at her, but his blue gaze was opaque, as though he were thinking of something quite other. ‘He never told us your name,’ he said, ‘but we all realised he had loved you. Very much.’

  There was no reproach in his tone but even so Alison felt a rush of guilt. ‘I loved him too,’ she said. ‘But it was… complicated.’

  ‘It often is,’ Richard said.

  ‘And I was too young to handle it,’ Alison said. ‘Although,’ she added hastily, seeing the flash of some expression in Richard’s eyes, ‘I’d never belittle it by saying it was a youthful thing and not important.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, you know what I mean.’

  Richard smiled at her. ‘You have a second chance now. Not many people get those.’

  Alison’s sense of guilt intensified. Richard was right, of course, which only made it all the more painful that she felt so torn between the past and the present. The feeling had haunted her for the whole day, first in her conversation with Diana and now here.

  ‘It’s very new,’ she said cautiously. ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘You will walk away again…’

  Diana’s words seem to echo in her mind. When had she started to want to belong somewhere rather than to be forever searching? It confused her. Finding Arthur had been her sole purpose for so long. She had never imagined she might want something else, something that challenged the foundations of her belief.

  ‘Well, it’s up to you,’ Richard said. ‘Or Adam. Or both of you. At any rate, it isn’t my business. Sorry. This is very tactless of me. I’m an interfering old man and I should keep my mouth shut.’

  Silence fell, but it was a comfortable silence broken only by the hopeful beat of Monty’s tail on the floor as he begged for a biscuit.

  ‘I haven’t had the chance to thank you for telling me about Middlecote,’ Alison said, after a moment. ‘It helped me a lot to know where to go for my research.’

  Richard lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘I sensed you were looking for something,’ he said. ‘If I helped then I’m glad.’

  ‘You obviously have a keen interest in the place,’ Alison said. She had seen the pile of books teetering on the edge of one of the shelves. They had titles such as Wiltshire Airfields in the Second World War and 101st Airborne Division and Berkshire Battlefields.

  ‘Middlecote played host to a succession of British and US troops during the Second World War,’ Richard said. ‘It’s an interest of mine.’

  ‘Middlecote has a pretty war-torn history down the centuries, hasn’t it,’ Alison said. ‘Adam mentioned that a regiment of parliamentarian troops were based there during the English Civil War.’

  ‘Ralph Hopton’s men,’ Richard said. He moved sharply, as though something pained him. ‘Yes, there was a great deal of action in this area during the 1640s. Vicious fighting, some of it.’ He stood up a little abruptly. ‘Well, I imagine you’ll be needing to get home…’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Alison could take a hint. The atmosphere in the office had changed; it felt awkward, painful in some way as though their conversation had taken a wrong turning though she had no idea how or why.

  She gathered up her bag. ‘Thanks again,’ she said.

  ‘No problem.’ Richard’s smile was back but his eyes looked strained and the lines ran deep in his face. ‘Interesting name, Bannister,’ he added, apparently at random. ‘Very old. Norman French, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alison said. ‘My ancestors came over with the Conquest and inter-married with the Saxons.’

  ‘The Hewers were stonemasons, I believe,’ Richard said. ‘They took their name from their occupation. Good working stock, though like so many people they did have noble connections way back in the medieval period. Fascinating subject, family history.’

  Alison stood up. ‘I’d better go before I get a parking ticket,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the tea as well as for taking Hector. Please will you let me know how he gets on?’

  ‘Of course,’ Richard said. He walked with her back to the gallery door and held it open for her to go out onto the pavement.

  ‘This feels like a very old building,’ Alison said, turning to look at the frontage. ‘Do you know when it was built?’

  ‘It’s seventeenth century,’ Richard said. ‘It was built after the great fire that gutted Marlborough in 1653.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alison said, ‘I thought it might be earlier.’ She felt disappointed; so much for the glimpse through the open door into an earlier worl
d. Suddenly, she realised how tired she was; tired, sad, and imagining things. She was going to need to be very careful driving home.

  ‘I believe it was rebuilt on earlier foundations,’ Richard said. ‘This bit of the street was once part of the White Hart Inn. It was much bigger in the Tudor period. The stables and outbuildings were located somewhere around here. In fact—’ he looked around vaguely ‘—I have a sand clock somewhere that was originally in the Tudor inn. I bought it about ten years ago when they turned the place into a gastro pub and got rid of a lot of the old fixtures and fittings.’

  Alison felt as though the polished boards of the gallery were shifting slightly under her feet. ‘What’s a sand clock?’ she asked.

  ‘An hourglass,’ Richard said, diving back into the office, then calling over his shoulder, ‘like an old-fashioned egg timer. You know the sort of thing—the sand runs from one segment to the other.’

  The sands of time…

  Alison felt a cold shiver rack her. She remembered her utter despair on going into the White Hart ten years before and finding that her route back to the past was denied to her. For so long, she had cudgelled her mind to try to work out what had changed, when the pub, whilst different in decoration over the years, had been essentially the same.

  Except it had not. Something had been lost, sold off, missing…

  ‘Here it is.’ Richard had emerged from the office in triumph holding an hourglass in his hand. It was smaller than Alison had imagined, the bronze and silver gilt of the wooden stand worn away in places, the sand inside the glass a pale golden colour.

  ‘It’s a pretty little thing, isn’t it,’ Richard said. ‘Not so fragile that it hasn’t survived for five hundred years. It used to hang on the bar but as you can see it was originally designed to stand on a flat surface like a table.’

  ‘I’ve seen something like it recently,’ Alison said slowly. She chased the elusive memory. It had not been in Diana’s cottage, yet there was some connection there, tugging at the edge of her mind.

  ‘I’ll be in touch about Hector,’ Richard said. ‘Give my best to Adam when you see him.’

  He closed the door of the shop, locked it and waved to her through the glass. Alison watched as he walked back through the display of paintings and disappeared through the door into the back room, the sand clock in his hand. Further down the street the door of the White Hart opened and a group of people came out, chatting and laughing.

  Alison remembered then. She saw the open hall of the old inn and the spiteful landlady stirring the pot of beef stew and on the table at her side a wooden hourglass with the sand almost run through. She felt a little faint. She turned back to the gallery, a mad idea possessing her that she would simply run back in and snatch the sand glass from Richard’s hand. But it was too late. The showroom was dark and no light gleamed beyond the office door. She would have to wait. But now she knew. She knew she had found the key.

  Chapter 23

  Mary, 1566

  The end of September brought disaster to Middlecote, if disaster it was to see Will dragged away to Salisbury gaol. Others might disagree and see it as a blessing. I see it as the beginning of the end, the start of the long unravelling of Will’s fate and the short unravelling of my own.

  To tell the truth, I was more concerned with Thomas than with Will that day. I had met him at the Phantom Tree a full fortnight before with a letter for the Queen, to be delivered by Liz Aiglonby on my behalf, and since then there had been no progress. I knew he had reached London safely. That much he had vouchsafed to me when I had called on him. Now he kicked his heels at the Queen’s pleasure. Whilst he waited, I fretted. As each day passed exactly like the last, I fretted a little more. I wanted Thomas back, I wanted to make a fresh start with him and I wanted it immediately. I had no patience, another quality I had no doubt inherited from my reckless father.

  It was a night of winter storms. The house creaked and groaned like a foundering galleon. Branches tapped against the window. The wind hurled rain against the panes. It was no time to be venturing out in the dark and the wild weather. Despite that, at past midnight, I heard the peal of the bell at the door and a violent knocking. Accustomed now to nocturnal disturbance, I simply heaved a sigh and turned over in bed, burying my head beneath the bolster. A moment later, though, there were voices upraised and the sound of footsteps on the landing outside, then the rasp of Will’s chamber door opening.

  A burst of desolate weeping dragged me from beneath the covers to sit bolt upright in horror. There was such misery and hopelessness in it.

  ‘I had to come! Where else might I go?’

  Then Will’s voice, slurred with drink and malice: ‘I have no notion, nor do I care. You cannot be here. Not now. For pity’s sake go home.’

  Another door slammed violently close by and I started. There were shouts and a babble of voices, swiftly hushed. Were those Lady Fenner’s sharp tones I heard, raised in heated argument with her son? It was impossible to tell through the maelstrom of sound outside and the confusion within.

  After throwing back the covers, I groped for my mantle and found my way to the door. Out in the corridor was Eleanor, huddled, barefoot and shivering. A line of light showed beneath Will’s door.

  ‘What is going on?’ I asked her.

  ‘I heard sobbing.’ Eleanor was practically sobbing herself, with fear and anxiety. ‘Someone is in there—’ She stopped and grabbed my arm tightly as the most pitiful scream I had ever heard rent the air. There was another, and another. It sounded as though someone were being gutted alive.

  ‘Merciful heavens,’ Eleanor gasped whilst I stood frozen with horror.

  The door opened.

  ‘Where is that bloody midwife?’ Will’s voice bellowed from within.

  Lady Fenner appeared in the doorway with the light behind her. She was fully dressed, neat as a pin, an incongruous sight in the middle of such chaos. She closed the door swiftly behind her but not before I had seen the room in all its vivid horror: Will, dishevelled, pacing before the fire, a woman on the bed apparently convulsed in agony. A maidservant, white and shaking, with a pan of hot water and evidently not the slightest idea of what to do.

  I thought Eleanor was going to faint. She swayed and I caught her instinctively, then Lady Fenner was by my side.

  ‘Come away,’ she snapped. ‘This is no place for you.’

  Eleanor was drooping in my arms, weeping softly. She was a broken reed.

  ‘What in God’s name goes on here, madam?’ I burst out. I could not help myself. Not even Lady Fenner’s most quelling expression could hold me silent.

  ‘The poor soul went into labour whilst travelling,’ Lady Fenner said, her hand on my arm like a claw dragging both Eleanor and I away. ‘We have sent to Mother Barnes, the midwife. I pray God she comes soon.’

  It was a tissue of lies, all of it. I knew it at once. William would never have given succour to any woman in her hour of need. Most likely he would have turned a stranger from the door. Besides, I had heard her words, and his. They had known one another.

  I wanted to argue, but Eleanor had started to snuffle and sniff again by now and all my energies were taken with encouraging her back into her chamber. Together Lady Fenner and I got her into bed and then Lady Fenner ushered me out and turned the key in the door on the outside, pocketing it.

  ‘I do not want Eleanor disturbed by anything else,’ she said. ‘She is of a most sensitive disposition.’

  ‘Certainly she can be of no help to you in this situation.’ I agreed.

  Her eyes narrowed on me. ‘She will keep her mouth shut. That is all the help I need.’ She gestured to me to precede her into my own chamber. ‘Can I trust you to do the same?’ She must have read the answer in my eyes for she replied to her own question. ‘No, of course I cannot. You are as slippery as an eel, Mary Seymour. I will lock you up too whilst I think what to do about this.’

  ‘I’ve seen nothing,’ I said, ‘other than a woman in your son’s
bedchamber, which is in no way an uncommon occurrence.’

  I saw her lips twitch and thought she would smile but in the end all she said was, ‘You are too sharp. Your wits will bring you into danger.’

  I knew she meant to lock me up and God knew what she would do to me after that, but before any of it could happen there was an urgent call from the landing.

  ‘My lady, the midwife is here!’

  With an impatient exclamation, Lady Fenner hurried away, leaving me on the threshold of my room.

  All good sense should have prompted me to go inside and shoot the bolt myself. That way I could have pretended for ever that I had seen or heard nothing of import that night. But I was done with pretending. I was done with closing my eyes to Will Fenner’s misdeeds. So I waited a breath or two and then, my heart thumping, I slid from the room and silently followed her, hiding around corners, sliding into shadows, making sure I was neither heard nor seen this time.

  The door of Will’s chamber was firmly shut. The sound from within was muted. I waited, but nothing happened.

  I felt my heartbeat settle a little and the tense knot of fear in my chest slowly started to unravel. Then I heard the thin wail of a baby’s cry.

  The child had been born and it was alive.

  ‘God be praised,’ I whispered. There was some good news in Middlecote Hall this night.

  Yet something was wrong. Even as a feeling of nameless dread began to swell in my chest again I saw it all happen before my eyes, slowly, oh so slowly, each moment in agonising clarity. The door opened and the little maidservant ran out. She was screaming, loud and shocking, her mouth a wide gape of fear and horror; Lady Fenner was hot on her heels.

  Behind her, the firelight illuminated a scene from hell. Will, in his shirtsleeves, bloodstained and dishevelled, his eyes glazed with a blank madness; a pile of white sheets on the floor, similarly stained with streaks of blood, and on the bed the woman, not screaming now, but sobbing as though her heart would break, a great sodden heaving mass of misery, from her white tear-stained face to the disjointed tumble of her limbs.