Perdita could see from Kit’s expression that he did not understand where she was heading with her theory; it was essential to convince him. Taking a deep breath, she delivered the crux of her new idea.
“From all we’ve discovered, I think this house is somehow linked to Catherine Howard’s story.”
“But, Perds, how? It’s hundreds of miles from London. How would Catherine have ended up here?” said Kit before giving her a curious look. “Have you found something else?”
“No, but I think there is a way we could find out. Look, I admit some of this is gut instinct, but if you look at the broader picture, there is increasing evidence. Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke Castle which is only a few miles away, and when he came back to claim his throne, he landed at Mill Bay in Milford Haven. From there he marched inland and went on to win the Battle of Bosworth against Richard III, so this area is the Tudor heartland,” said Perdita, glancing at Kit to read his expression to see if he was still listening. He looked bemused but the focus of his eyes encouraged her to continue.
“Not only that,” she went on, “we know Marquess House was once part of Anne Boleyn’s dowry from that book in the library Marquess House: A History by Arabella Talbot, which was written in the eighteenth century. Before he married her, Henry wanted to elevate Anne to the highest ranks of the aristocracy, so he created the title Marquess of Pembroke for her. It was the first hereditary peerage title granted to a woman, hence the reason she was a Marquess rather than the usual female title of Marchioness; it was where the house got its name. After her fall, the house and its lands were returned to the king, who gifted the estate to her uncle, Thomas Howard, the duke of Norfolk, as a reward for dealing so swiftly with the problem that Anne Boleyn had become. Thomas Howard was Catherine’s uncle and Kathy Knollys, who, we know from her own account, went on a journey with Catherine, has drawn a sketch of a house that looks like the original part of the building. I think the ring was left behind by Catherine, and was evidence that she had lived here at some point. Penelope found it or acquired it and became determined to keep the secret of what really happened to Catherine Howard…”
“But we’re back to the problem of proof!” exclaimed Kit.
“Do you know if there are any household records, accounts, laundry lists, from that era in the archive?”
“Yes, as far as I know. Why?” Then understanding bloomed on his face. “You think Catherine Howard might be mentioned in the household records?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Perdita. “So much of history is hidden in the everyday details of life. I might be completely wrong but don’t you think it would be worth discovering who was in residence in this house at the time it states in Kathy Knollys’ Book of Hours that Catherine and some of her ladies took their journey without the king’s permission, especially as, at that date in the accepted version of events, Catherine Howard should have been dead? Catherine was the secret, Kit, I’m sure of it and the ruby ring is the final piece of the puzzle. It was her ring and it proves she was here after the date of her supposed death; that was the secret Penelope was prepared to die to keep.”
Kit stared at her, awestruck.
“You’re incredible,” he said, then reached for the phone to call Jenny and ask her to find the household accounts for Marquess House during the 1540s.
Jenny and Izabel arrived with a trolley holding two storage boxes.
“I’m intrigued,” Jenny said as they lifted them onto the boardroom table and began arranging the contents. “Two days before Mary died, she requested the same items: it’s why we have them. These are among the original documents that Mary inherited with the house when she was twenty-one. Most of them are extremely fragile and are usually stored at Jerusalem, where they have an even greater capacity than we do and where their humidity controls are even more advanced than ours.”
Perdita’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Did Granny say why?” she asked.
“No, she merely requested they be brought out of deep storage as there were a few things she wanted to check,” replied Izabel. “It’s why we were able to access them so quickly for you, otherwise it would have taken a few weeks. We were already in the process of fetching them when Mary died, so when they arrived, we put them in our storage area until they could be returned.” Izabel finished lining up the foam wedges with their ancient ledgers. “See you later,” she said and disappeared back to the library.
Perdita and Kit were already walking along the row of books, eagerly examining the dusty volumes.
“They’re in surprisingly good condition,” said Jenny. “The housekeeper back then, Mrs Page, believed in buying quality ledgers, so these have survived. It isn’t a complete set — we’re missing January, February and December. If it’s important, I can contact my counterpart, Dr Deborah Black, at the Jerusalem library to check whether they’ve been filed with another year in error. These will start you off though, Perdita. What are you looking for?”
“Names of guests,” replied Perdita, pausing in front of the ledger labelled May 1542, “you’re very welcome to help us.” Then a thought struck her. “Are they in Welsh?” she knew it would not be an insurmountable problem but it would delay their quest while they had them translated. Jenny took the volume marked June 1542, then shook her head.
“No, they’re in English. Mrs Helen Page took over as housekeeper in early 1541 and she was originally from London. Her husband Joshua accompanied her and worked as the chief steward,” she replied. “We do have some in Welsh from other years after the Pages left.”
“You know a lot about the Pages,” commented Perdita.
“They’re mentioned in one of the older books about Marquess House,” she said. “Apparently, they moved here after their daughter Maud was murdered. They must have wanted a new start.”
“How awful, the poor things.”
Kit opened the book marked July 1542 and begun running his finger down the endless lists of household orders.
“What am I looking for?” asked Jenny, making herself comfortable at one of the desks and perching her glasses on her nose.
“Any comments about female guests, particularly Lady Isabel Baynton, Lady Margaret Douglas, Lady Kathryn Knollys or Catherine Howard herself,” replied Perdita.
Jenny stared at her agog. “You think they stayed here?”
“It’s a theory we’re working on,” Perdita replied before turning her attention to the ancient ledger in front of her.
With her expert eye for detail, Perdita quickly learned to decipher the extravagantly swirled handwriting of Mrs Page, so she was soon scanning column after column, looking for clues. At first, all she could find were entries listing the usual household requirements: tallow candles, poppy seed, linen, beeswax, barley for Mr Evans, payments to local butchers, flour from the miller, coal for the blacksmith, but nothing about guests.
Maybe this is a wild goose chase, thought Perdita, but her instincts told her to keep searching, particularly now she knew her grandmother had requested the same items. Turning page after page, detail upon detail of how Marquess House was managed in May 1542 unfolded before her eyes, each instruction or order flowing across the ancient paper. A vision of the house began to form in her mind with such vividness, she could almost hear Mrs Page’s voice echoing through the centuries. Her eye ran down another column near the end of the month.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“What?” asked Kit.
“‘Linen for Lady I Baynton’ and ‘divers herbes for Lady Tudor’,” read Perdita, triumph in her voice. “Poor Lady Tudor, whoever she was, wasn’t very well,” she said and read the items out loud: “Aloe, lovage, comfrey, Solomon’s seal, wood sage, carraway, chervil, as well as multiple visits from the apothecary, the barber surgeon and a local healer.”
Kit pulled his laptop towards him and after a few moments said: “All those herbs were used for healing bruises, cuts, broken limbs and fevers,” he looked up with an expression of revulsion. “Do you
think Lady Tudor had been tortured?”
“I hope not,” Perdita shuddered.
“Who’s Lady Tudor, though?” asked Jenny.
Perdita shrugged. “Part of the entourage, maybe? Placing Lady Isabel Baynton here corroborates the comments from the Book of Hours. If Isabel was here, it’s possible Catherine Howard was too.”
Perdita turned back to her ledger and continued searching. Jenny and Kit followed suit.
“‘Paints for Lady Knollys’,” read Kit. “And,” he could barely keep the excitement from his voice, “‘Ink for Lady Douglas’, Perds, you were right! They were here!”
“We still need a reference to Catherine herself,” said Perdita, delighted that her hunch had been correct. “Keep looking!”
As Perdita and Kit searched the books for the name Catherine Howard, Jenny began logging the references made to her ladies-in-waiting.
“There’s a Charles Howard listed here,” said Kit after a long silence. “‘Riding boots and travelling cloaks’. Maybe he was heading back to London.”
“Charles Howard,” Perdita murmured. “Catherine’s elder brother.”
“Yes,” said Jenny, noting down Charles’s name. “As you both know, he was engaged to Lady Margaret Douglas during his sister’s reign as queen, although his fate is unknown. He disappeared from court records in 1542 and Lady Douglas married Matthew Stewart, the earl of Lennox in 1544.”
“But, if Charles Howard was here…” Perdita began, then Kit cut across her. “‘Flemish wine for Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk’!” he exclaimed.
Perdita returned to the whiteboard, examining the information they had collated.
“They were all here,” she said, quietly, “all the people we know were in Catherine’s inner circle, all the people whose letters are either included in the codex or are referred too…”
And then, suddenly, she understood.
“Lady Tudor!” Perdita gasped. “What if Lady Tudor was Catherine Howard? Her identity disguised so Henry VIII wouldn’t find her? We know from the codex that he had beaten her regularly throughout their marriage,” her eyes widened. “Lady Tudor, she wasn’t tortured, she was recovering from being brutalised by her husband. It has to be her, it has to be Catherine Howard!”
Jenny ran her eyes down the list of references, “You could be right, Perdita, the name Catherine Howard is conspicuous by its absence…”
“Which is all very well,” cut in Kit, trying not to sound exasperated, “but if she isn’t named, we can’t prove it was truly Catherine Howard.”
Perdita continued to stare at the timeline. “It must be her,” she said. “Catherine Howard was at Marquess House, there isn’t any other logical explanation. Although, if she escaped to Pembrokeshire, who was executed on 13 February 1542? Was anybody actually executed or was the Bill of Attainder a complete fabrication?”
She turned to look at Kit, her face wreathed with confusion. “We seem to be creating more problems than we’re solving.”
“Don’t give up now, Perds,” Kit said. “This is a massive step forward: we can prove Catherine’s ladies, her brother and her uncle all visited this house in 1542. Somehow, somewhere, we’ll find a way to prove whether or not Lady Tudor was Catherine Howard. Come on, there are two ledgers left to check, I’ll take October, you take November.”
Sitting down once more, Perdita’s mind was whirring. Placing Catherine’s half-sister, Lady Isabel Baynton; her brother, Charles Howard and her uncle, the duke of Norfolk at Marquess House was startling, but unless they had a record of her name, it proved nothing. Forcing herself to focus on the ledger in front of her, Perdita concentrated once more on Mrs Page’s elaborate handwriting. Three pages in, she called out, her voice unexpectedly harsh and urgent. “Kit, Jenny: look!”
Her eyes were wide as she pushed the ancient book towards them. “Five lines down, ‘A woollen shawl for Lady C Howard’, but it’s been crossed out and replaced with the name Tudor. It was her. She was here!”
All three of them stared at each other in delight. Jenny seized the book and turned a few more pages: “Linen for Lady Howard, ink for Mistress C Howard…”
“But why suddenly use her real name?” interrupted Kit.
“Human error,” suggested Perdita, “or maybe Henry was no longer looking for her. He married Katheryn Parr in 1543. Perhaps he was so enamoured with her, it was safe to use Catherine’s real name again.”
Kit still looked perplexed. “What?” asked Perdita.
“She was here, we can prove that, but what happened next? Where did she go afterwards?”
“I don’t understand…”
“She was a young woman. If she was now free from the king,” said Kit, “do you think she stayed here? Lived in Pembrokeshire for the rest of her life?”
“Let’s keep looking,” said Perdita, fired up with enthusiasm and energy now they had made this huge discovery. She returned to her ledger and continued to scour the pages.
Suddenly, she saw something that made her gasp in surprise.
“What?” asked Kit.
“I think I’ve found the real reason she was here,” said Perdita, and pushed the ancient book towards Kit and Jenny. Both of them read the entry that had startled Perdita and looked at her, their eyes round with wonder.
“But that’s impossible…” whispered Kit.
“Perhaps this is what MI1 wanted to stop Granny Mary telling the world,” replied Perdita, gazing down at the ledger as the words reached out from another time, finally revealing this greatest of secrets. “While history might tell us that Catherine Howard was executed at the Tower of London on 13 February 1542, it seems she was actually alive and well, living in Pembrokeshire and preparing to give birth.”
Chapter Four
Perdita came to understand the full power of Marquess House as a centre of research. Jenny and Alistair invited her into an official meeting and they explained how her grandmother had structured a process for cataloguing new information.
“Whenever Mary found documents she felt were important, our task force was activated so the information could be captured quickly and efficiently,” Jenny had explained. “My team will translate and digitise the original documents so we have an immediate record, making the information more accessible for future research. I also wondered whether, with this discovery, you would like Izabel to head up a team to cross reference all the information in the ledgers with that in the codex so we can create a timeline of Catherine Howard and her entourage’s movements from February 1542 onwards.”
“Can we do that?” Perdita had asked. She was used to the slow wheels of academia, committees, steering groups, recommendations, the trickle of funding and endless pointless meetings before research could begin. This swift, efficient system was something of a shock.
“Oh yes, it’s what we do best,” Jenny had replied, her eyes sparkling.
Now, two weeks later, Perdita felt they could conclusively prove that Catherine Howard had taken refuge within the walls of Marquess House. They were still awaiting the arrival of the household accounts from 1543, 1544 and 1545, which were in deep storage in Castle Jerusalem. Dr Black had suggested it might be quicker for Perdita to pay them a visit in Andorra to view the documents if it was urgent, but as she was awaiting the arrival of Piper, she had decided to wait. At present, she had more than enough to be dealing with, processing the information from the 1542 books.
Letting herself into her apartment, she dropped her bags onto an armchair then wandered into her bedroom where she kicked off her boots and brushed her hair, pulling it up into a ponytail. It had been another hectic day and her mind was still teeming with all they had found. Kit had invited her to join him and his friends at the pub but she had refused, wanting to spend the evening writing up her notes. Time and research had taught her that, when she had this amount of information whirring through her mind, the only way she could deal with it was to write it down, then her brain would relax enough for her to focus on other things, li
ke sleep.
Returning to her sitting room, she grabbed her laptop, wandered into the kitchen where she poured herself a glass of red wine, then settled herself on her sofa, her computer on a cushion on her lap, and proceeded to type. An hour later, she was finished. Sipping her wine, she read back through her notes, correcting the occasional word, clarifying certain sections, until she was satisfied with what she had written. She put the laptop on the coffee table in front of her and closed her eyes, happier now her observations and ideas were out of her head and safely on paper.
If only Granny were here, she thought. She would have been so excited to see what we’ve discovered. I wonder if this was what she had concluded in her final chapter…
Suddenly, she sat up. Her eyes alert, why hadn’t it occurred to her before? Mary must have had a computer, whether it was her own laptop or a dedicated unit in her office. If the missing chapter was anywhere, it would surely be there. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was still reasonably early. Assured neither Alistair or Susan would mind this small intrusion into their evening, she dialled their number.
Ten minutes later, Perdita was letting herself into her grandmother’s suite. It was the first time she had been in there since she and Piper had explored it before Mary’s funeral. When she had offered to return the keys to Alistair, he had smiled and folded her fingers around them.
“They’re yours,” he had said. “Everything belongs to you and Piper. Everything.”
The room was spotlessly clean. Obviously, Sarah’s team had continued to keep Mary’s room pristine. Perdita had a sudden pang of guilt. She had been so engrossed with her research, she had not given any thought to Mary’s belongings and what to do with them. Eventually, she and Piper would have to make these decisions, it would be peculiar to leave the room exactly as Mary had kept it in life, but then, she kept our rooms ready, thought Perdita. Shaking her head, she pushed these thoughts away. There would be time to decide when Piper arrived, for now she had other things on her mind.
The Catherine Howard Conspiracy Page 33
