Chapter 25
CERENSTHORPE ABBEY – PRESENT DAY
‘The curse poem?’ Gulliver’s voice was tinged with anger. ‘You shared the family poem? I thought you told me only the heir was supposed to know its contents.’
Tabitha looked up at him, embarrassed that she had been so engrossed in Edith’s gothic tales that his appearance had shaken her with such intensity.
‘We are not cursed,’ said Gulliver and Tabitha was surprised to hear anger in his voice.
She had expected him to be amused by Edith’s superstitious nature, then she remembered how he had taunted her when she had tried to stop him blowing the golden hawking whistle, as though trying to hide his own fears.
‘Our blood does not carry a terrible blight handed down through the centuries. It’s a poem, nothing more. ’
‘A creepy poem,’ said Edith with relish.
‘Yes, but nevertheless, a poem.’
Tabitha slipped her phone from her pocket and took a surreptitious picture of the poem before closing the journal and placing it on the bed, then, without a word, she stood and began gathering the debris of Edith’s lunch.
‘Leave it, Tabs,’ Gulliver snapped. ‘You’re not a waitress. I’ll clear it up and take it down later.’
‘Thank you for the scone, Edith,’ she said before walking swiftly to the door, ignoring both Gulliver’s and Edith’s calls to return.
After Lucia’s unexpected appearance a week earlier, Gulliver’s behaviour towards her had been confusing.
Whenever they encountered each other, his mood was transient, shifting from polite, calm but distant, to irritability.
On another occasion, he had squeezed her hand and given her a look of deepest longing.
His aggravated response to Edith sharing family secrets was another new and unsettling side to his personality.
For some reason, she felt he was angry with her, but she could not understand what she had done wrong.
As she hurried away from Edith’s rooms, Tabitha wondered if she had misinterpreted his behaviour during an unpleasant scene with Lucia and this was the root of his irritation.
After Lucia’s outburst the previous week, Gulliver had returned an hour later to apologise and reassure her about her position at Cerensthorpe Abbey.
‘You’re family,’ he had said in a low voice, ‘the house would be empty without you, but I must calm Lucia.’
Yet, despite this conversation, he had kept his distance ever since. When she had spoken to Tamar, her sister had advised giving him space.
‘He was mentally preparing himself for a possible divorce,’ Tamar had said. ‘Lucia is playing with him emotionally and because of his feelings for you—’
‘His what?’ Tabitha had interrupted in shock.
‘He fancies you,’ Tamar had replied with a snort of laughter.
‘Honestly, Tabs, I’m surprised you don’t bump into more walls, you do walk around with your eyes shut.
When he caught you in the barn, it was like a scene from a love story.
I wonder where it might have led if Lucia hadn’t made her unexpected appearance. ’
Tabitha had blushed even though she was alone in Tadpole Cottage.
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ she had said. ‘Gulliver is in love with Lucia.’
‘Says you.’
‘Says him,’ she had replied and abruptly changed the subject to ask how Tamar’s daughter, Carenza, had done at a swimming gala the previous day.
Before her husband had died, Blake’s moods had begun to swing wildly.
At times he would appear euphoric, at others, despair as black as night would engulf him and he would rage at Tabitha about the unfairness of his diagnosis of motor neurone disease: a cruel and debilitating disease for which there was no cure.
Tabitha had known there were no words of reassurance she could offer because, as Blake stated so often, what was there to be done?
What solace could words provide when he had been sentenced to death?
‘Who can offer me comfort when it’s a matter of time before my body collapses around me and I die?’ he had howled in anguish. Tabitha had never felt more helpless.
Blake’s words returned to her whenever she was at a low ebb and as she walked away from Edith and Gulliver, the pain of losing him, of his terrible betrayal, washed over her anew.
Worse, Gulliver was angry too. He had directed it at Edith for sharing family secrets, but her instincts told her his emotions ran deeper.
Why am I even here? she thought in despair. I’m following clues in a scavenger hunt laid down over one hundred years ago for a book which probably no longer exists. It’s utter madness, coping with another moody man, who thinks it’s allowable to blame me for things over which I have no control.
Tears welled in her eyes. In a few short days, the happy inclusive atmosphere of Cerensthorpe Abbey had changed.
The house which had felt like her sanctuary was becoming oppressive and threatening.
When Edith had succumbed to the awful gastric bug, it had reminded them all of her great age and the looming spectre of death.
She had celebrated her ninety-first birthday in April, she would not last forever.
Is this why Lucia has returned? wondered Tabitha. Has she decided to reunite with Gulliver in order to play lady of the manor?
The woman was certainly eager to sort through the contents of the house.
What did she think was on the inventory list?
Tabitha wondered. Lucia’s family ran art galleries, but they also dealt with objets d’art and other rare artefacts.
Did Lucia believe the Chaucer existed or was she searching for a different treasure?
Stop it, Tabitha mentally scolded herself. You don’t like the woman, but there’s no need to suspect she’s capable of theft.
She glanced at her watch, aware she should go back to her office and continue with her work, but, if she did, she had no doubt Gulliver would appear and, under threat of another scolding from Edith, offer a stiff-lipped apology. Right now, she was fed up with him and his ever-shifting emotions.
Tabitha hesitated at the top of the stairs.
She disliked unfinished business and if in the near future, Lucia managed to persuade Gulliver to give her notice and force her to leave, she would never know if the rare Chaucer manuscript was truly hidden in Cerensthorpe Abbey.
A recklessness overwhelmed her, and she turned away from the staircase that would lead to her office, instead marching along the corridor that led to the family chapel.
It had long since been deconsecrated and converted into a sitting room.
It was rarely used as it faced north and held a chilliness no amount of heating could dispel, even in summer.
Wood-panelled walls added to the gloomy atmosphere and a vast stained-glass window filtered the light, giving the room a twilight feel.
The image in the glass was of an angel with a dove hovering above it with a white falcon on its shoulder, which was etched in dull blues, browns and muted greens.
The two birds were the only points of light in the muddy scene.
At the bottom, in elaborate scroll work was the name:
Robert Raven – 1621–1651.
Died fighting for his king at the Battle of Inverkeithing.
During a dinner in her first week, Gulliver had claimed the position of the chapel was deliberate.
‘When you were praying, you would always have felt uncomfortable because it was so cold. All those nuns, kneeling on bare boards.’
‘You’re a wicked boy,’ Edith had said, pretending to scold him.
‘You know very well the abbey church was a separate building until the house was gifted to Elizabeth Boleyn. The ruins in the garden are all that’s left of the original church.
The family chapel was created in the seventeenth century during the English Civil War by Robert Raven, grandson of Maud Knollys, before he went into battle.
The dates are on the stained-glass window.
His wife, Anne, was said to have been the source of one of the family ghost stories.
She’s supposed to have hidden an injured cavalier in a priest hole, but he vanished without trace. He’s rumoured to haunt the ruins.’
Tabitha had only been in the chapel once, a few weeks after her arrival, in order to examine the window, photograph and catalogue it.
Her visit had been brief as there had been a sense of sadness in the large room, with its air of perpetual dusk that had made her shiver.
As such, Tabitha had paid scant attention to the vast painting which filled the wall leading to the old chapel on either her entrance or hurried exit.
Now, as she stood in the corridor, gazing at the image, she felt herself drawn into another world.
The colours, faded by time and dulled beneath varnish, had slipped into sepia, as though the scene belonged to a half-remembered dream.
In the background, a riverbank stretched into the distance, with bare trees leaning towards the dark water, heavy clouds pressing down, while boats lay stranded on mudflats in the retreating tide.
In the mud, tiny figures stooped, scarves and coats drawn tight against the cold, their shapes blurred as if they were drifting into memory rather than painted on a canvas.
The square building on the horizon rose above them all, each corner marked by a tower, stark against the pallor of a winter sunrise.
Yet, what held the eye were the birds. Seven curlews waded in the shallows, their impossibly long beaks criss-crossing in an intricate geometry, each head turned a different way as though charting invisible paths.
Their bodies seemed to lengthen as she stared, the lines of their beaks tangling into shapes that flickered at the edge of sight. A cross? The sweep of an axe?