Chapter Five #2
“It’s progress, apparently,” Trinkett said bitterly. “Though what’s progressive about destroying five hundred years of history is beyond me.”
As the tour wound down, Eva approached Trinkett privately. “Do you know anything about someone named Margaret Wells?”
His bushy eyebrows shot up. “Margaret Wells! Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Local legend, she was. Used to leave little notes around York for visitors to find—tucked in library books, behind loose stones, that sort of thing. Always encouraging words, bits of poetry.”
“Do you know why she did it?”
Trinkett’s expression grew thoughtful. “Started during the war, they say. She was a nurse, saw terrible things, God love her. The notes were her way of putting beauty back into the world. She wrote the most heartwarming stories but never published them. Whenever anyone asked her about it she’d just say she was saving them for the right time.
” He shook his head sadly. “Poor woman never found it.”
Eva turned heading away from Trinkett when she heard a small voice, “Excuse me, dear,” the woman said, her voice papery but warm. “I couldn’t help overhearing you asking about Margaret Wells on Mister John Trinkett’s tour.”
“Yes,” Eva said, steadying the woman as she navigated the uneven cobbles. “Did you know her?”
“She saved my father’s life.” The woman’s rheumy eyes grew distant. “Not quite in the medical sense—she was his nurse, yes, but that’s not what I mean. He came back from the war unable to speak, just sat in our front room staring at nothing. Mum was beside herself.”
Eva waited, sensing the weight of the memory.
“Then one day, he came home from the library with a book. Tucked inside was a note—I still have it. It said, ‘The words will come back when you’re ready. Until then, let these borrowed words speak for you.’ It was signed ‘M.W.’”
“What happened?”
“He started reading aloud to us every night. Children’s books at first, then poetry, then proper novels.
Took six months, but one evening he stopped mid-sentence in The Wind in the Willows and said, ‘That reminds me of …’ and told us about a river he’d seen in France.
First words of his own in over a year.” The woman dabbed at her eyes.
“Mum tried to find Margaret to thank her, but she’d only say she was glad the books helped.
That was her way—plant the seed and disappear before the bloom. ”
Eva wandered back through The Shambles, lost in thought. Margaret Wells, a nurse during the war who left notes of hope around the city. Who never published her stories. Who—
“Getting the full tourist experience, I see.”
Eva looked up to find Charlie Blackwood leaning against a shop doorway, arms crossed. Without his toolbox, in just jeans and a wool sweater, he looked younger, more relaxed.
“Mr Trinkett is very … thorough,” Eva said.
“That’s one word for it.” Charlie pushed off from the wall. “He tell you about the ghost of Mad Alice?”
“In graphic detail.”
“The plague victims?”
“Complete with sound effects.”
“The—”
“I now know more about medieval sewage systems than any person needs to,” Eva interrupted.
This time Charlie definitely smiled, just a quick flash before he caught himself. “Yeah, that’s Trinkett. Comes from a long line of town criers. The theatrical gene runs strong.”
They fell into step together, Charlie’s long strides forcing Eva to quicken her pace.
“Actually,” Eva said, trying to sound casual, “I asked him about Margaret Wells.”
Charlie’s step slowed slightly. “Did you?”
“He said she was quite famous locally. For her notes.”
“Trinkett likes to exaggerate and make more of things for his stories,” Charlie said shortly. “She was just … well, she just helped people during the war. That’s all.”
“That’s all? He made it sound like she was some kind of local hero.”
“People need heroes,” Charlie said, his tone carefully neutral. “Especially in places like this, at a time like that. Sometimes we can make the past out to be more glorious than the present.”
Eva studied his profile, noting the tension in his jaw. “You know more than you’re saying.”
“It’s just local history,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.
“Local history that you seem to take personally.”
Charlie stopped walking, turning to face her. “Why are you so interested in Margaret Wells?”
Eva held up the green book. “I found this in London. It led me here.”
Charlie stared at the book, something flickering across his face but too quick for Eva to read. “You came all the way to York because of a book?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds crazy.”
“No,” Charlie said quietly. “It sounds like something she would have wanted.”
Before Eva could ask what he meant, Charlie seemed to realise he’d said too much. His expression shuttered again.
“I’m actually quite the York expert now,” Eva said, trying to lighten the moment. “I know about the ghosts, the plague pits, the Victorian sewers …”
“But have you seen the real Minster?” Charlie asked. “Not the tourist version. The hidden bits.”
“I didn’t know there were hidden bits.”
“Everything in York has hidden bits,” Charlie said with a flicker in his eye. “That’s what makes it interesting.”
Was he flirting with her? Eva couldn’t tell. His expression remained studiously neutral, but there was something in his voice …
“Show me,” she said impulsively.
Charlie looked surprised, then checked his watch. “Now?”
“Unless you have more radiators to fix.”
“Florence’s radiators have survived centuries without me. They can manage another afternoon.” He paused, then added, “But this isn’t … I’m not trying to …”
“Relax,” Eva said. “Florence isn’t here to read anything into it. You’re just showing a tourist around. Civic duty and all that.”
“Right. Civic duty.” Charlie looked relieved. “Follow me then. And try not to destroy anything sacred. You’re only allowed mulled wine when leaving the market from now on.”
“That was one time!”
“Once was enough,” Charlie said, but his tone was lighter now, almost teasing.
York Minster in the late afternoon was a different creature than the morning tourist attraction. The crowds had thinned, and long shadows stretched across the stone floor. Charlie led her away from the main nave, through a door marked ‘Private’.
“Are we allowed back here?” Eva whispered.
“I help with restoration work sometimes,” Charlie said. “Comes with certain privileges.”
He led her up a narrow spiral staircase that seemed to go on forever. Eva’s legs burned by the time they emerged onto a hidden balcony overlooking the main cathedral.
“Oh,” she breathed.
From here, the Minster’s vastness was even more apparent. The stained-glass windows caught the late afternoon sun, throwing jewelled light across the stone. Far below, people moved like ants, their voices a distant murmur.
“Three hundred years to complete,” Charlie said softly. “Countless craftsmen, most of them nameless now. All that work, all that beauty, and they knew they’d never see it finished.”
“That’s either depressing or inspiring,” Eva said. “I can’t decide which.”
“Both,” Charlie said. “That’s what makes it human.”
They stood in comfortable silence, watching the light change. Then Charlie pointed to a section of the wall. “There. See that angel?”
Eva followed his gesture to a carved angel, different from the others. While most celestial beings in the Minster looked serene, this one seemed almost mischievous.
“The apprentice who carved it got in trouble,” Charlie explained. “It was too ‘worldly’, they said. But the master mason fought to keep it. Said even angels should be allowed to smile.”
“I like that story.”
“It’s one of the better ones,” Charlie said. “This place is full of stories, if you know where to look.”
He showed her more hidden details—a mason’s mark tucked behind a pillar, graffiti from the English Civil War, a small carving of a mouse that the Victorian restoration workers had added as a signature.
“How do you know all this?” Eva asked.
“Spent a lot of time here as a kid,” Charlie said, his voice carefully neutral. “Good place to hide from the world.”
As they made their way back down to the main floor, Eva remembered what she’d found in the green book. “Actually, there’s something I wanted to check. The north transept—Mr Trinkett mentioned something about angels there?”
Charlie’s expression shifted slightly. “The Angel Choir. Yeah, it’s worth seeing.”
They made their way to the north transept, where carved angels lined the walls at eye level. Eva studied them, remembering the note from the green book about looking beneath an angel’s wing.
“Looking for something specific?” Charlie asked, watching her closely.
“Just … exploring,” Eva said, examining the intricate carvings. Each angel was unique—some played instruments, others held scrolls or flowers.
She paused at one angel set slightly apart from the others, its wings spread protectively. There, at the base, she spotted a small brass plaque that looked much newer than the medieval stonework:
In memory of those who came to heal but found home instead. For the American who left his heart in York, 1945-1946.
“Oh,” Eva said softly. “Charlie, look at this.”
Charlie crouched beside her, and she noticed his jaw tighten when he read the inscription. “Interesting,” he said, his voice too casual.
“An American, just after the war,” Eva mused. “I wonder who he was.”
“Could be anyone,” Charlie said, standing abruptly. “Lots of Americans came through York during the war. Bases nearby.”
“But this sounds personal,” Eva pressed. “‘Left his heart in York’. That’s not just about being stationed here.”
“Maybe,” Charlie said, already moving away. “Or maybe someone just thought it sounded poetic.”
“Why are you being so dismissive of this? What do you know Charlie?” Eva said, studying his profile.
“I know that we should go,” Charlie said, not meeting her eyes. “Florence will wonder where you’ve got to.”
As they walked back through the darkening streets, Eva couldn’t shake the feeling that the plaque was important.
The reference to healing, to finding home—it connected somehow to Margaret Wells, the nurse who helped wounded soldiers.
But for some unknown reason, Charlie clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
“Thank you,” she said as they reached the inn. “For showing me the Minster.”
Charlie nodded, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “York has a way of revealing its secrets slowly. Just … don’t be in too much of a hurry to uncover them all.”
He left before she could ask what he meant.
That evening, after a quiet dinner in the inn’s small dining room, Eva climbed the stairs to her room. She opened the desk drawer and found a small stack of Riddle & Quill stationery—cream coloured paper with the inn’s logo embossed at the top.
She sat at the small desk, pen poised, thinking about the day. About Charlie’s careful deflections, about the hidden corners of the Minster, about the American who left his heart in York. Then she began to write:
There are stories that live in the spaces between stones, in the silence after church bells stop ringing. York keeps them all—the nurse who wrote love into a broken world, the American soldier who never quite made it home, the people who make up the tapestry of this ancient city.
Today a man showed me hidden angels in ancient walls. He spoke of craftsmen who built beauty they’d never see completed.
In the north transept of York Minster, there’s a plaque that reads: ‘For the American who left his heart in York.’ The brass has worn smooth from touching, as if people come here to remember their own lost loves, their own unfinished stories.
Charlie knows who the American was. I saw it in the way his hands tightened, the way he turned away. Some pain runs so deep it becomes part of the architecture of a family, passed down like brown eyes or stubborn chins.
I came to York following a stranger’s breadcrumbs, but I’m beginning to understand that Margaret Wells wasn’t leaving clues—she was leaving a confession, scattered across the city in pieces small enough to bear.
She folded the letter carefully and tucked it into the green book. Through her window, York glowed under the streetlights, and somewhere out there were more pieces of Margaret Wells’ story, waiting patiently to be found.