Chapter 2 #4
You have no idea, Jenna thought. ‘I understood there were rules preventing the archaeological disturbance of burial sites.’ She interrupted Alison’s monologue.
‘I mean, this was once a religious community. It feels disrespectful to disturb such ancient human remains in this way just for the sake of it.’
Not even Alison’s enthusiasm was proof against the disapproval in her voice. Jenna saw her stiffen and a new understanding came into her eyes. She had evidently identified Jenna as someone of strong religious beliefs and felt the need to reassure her.
‘Everything is done in a very dignified and respectful way,’ Alison said soothingly.
Jenna could tell she had a script for this precise situation.
‘Human remains and the ritual items with which people were buried are a very important source of scientific information, so it’s crucial that excavation is permitted within the guidelines.
Anything we dig up – I mean, any human remains are reburied according to the appropriate rites.
But we’re a long way from that.’ She took a deep breath, her smile back in place.
‘We may not find anything. One step at a time.’ She was now retreating from Jenna in precisely that manner, one step at a time.
‘Do drop into the exhibition in the stables,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘if you’d like to chat some more. ’
Jenna watched her scurry off towards the entrance. She could imagine Alison warning her colleagues: ‘Look out, guys! Awkward visitor alert!’
She waited until Alison was out of sight and then looked around, checking that no one else was nearby.
There was a group of several people with pushchairs and small children over in the gardens, and she thought she saw a faint flash of movement in an upstairs window at the manor but could not be sure.
She waited a bit longer, but it was not repeated.
A couple wandered past her and disappeared through a ruined arch to her left.
The sun crept a little higher in the sky, peeking over the edge of the trees.
Peace and quiet had flowed back over the ruins with the cawing of the rooks and the faint burbling of the little river, but Jenna was not feeling calm.
She walked slowly over to the line of pillars that had once supported the roof of the nave, following their course towards the quire.
The outlines of the lady chapel in the north transept were no more than a faint print in the grass, almost invisible.
Once the archaeologists did a geophysical survey of this part of the church, though, she suspected that they might get very excited about what lay beneath.
She went down on her knees in the frosty grass and touched her fingers to the earth. It seemed to vibrate gently beneath her hand.
‘All I ask is that you protect the child. Care for him and keep the secret.’ She could hear Queen Anna of Cleves’ voice down the centuries, and also hear Marris’s response:
‘I will, madam. I swear it on my life.’
Marris had given her promise on that winter day in 1540, and Anna’s secret had been safely buried – until now.
At least, Jenna assumed so. There was nothing to indicate that it had ever been discovered.
Marris and Will were long gone, but she was here now and to her had fallen the responsibility of preserving the secret.
Jenna had known from the beginning that this must be her purpose.
She and Marris were both the same, born to protect.
She took out her phone and called Bree, who answered on the third ring.
‘Speak to me,’ Bree said, in the fey, fortune-teller’s tone that always made Jenna want to tell her to snap out of it.
‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘I’m at Winterhill.’
‘I know,’ Bree said, still sounding like a psychic.
‘Have you been checking Find My iPhone?’ Jenna asked. They had had a family group for the three of them until Molly had taken herself off it a year ago.
‘Maybe.’ Bree suddenly sounded normal. ‘I just wanted to know if you had the whole day off. I thought you might be working this morning and I was going to pop into the shop with a birthday cake.’
‘Oh.’ That took the wind out of Jenna’s sails. ‘That’s so nice of you. Perhaps we could get together later?’
‘I’m having dinner with a famous sculptor in London tonight,’ Bree said. ‘I can’t tell you who – it’s under wraps at the moment but we’re exhibiting together at the V&A in the autumn.’
‘Congratulations,’ Jenna said. ‘Well, let’s meet up soon. Anyway—’ she took a breath ‘—there’s a problem. They’re planning an archaeological excavation here at Winterhill Priory.’
There was a silence at the end of the phone. Then: ‘And that’s a problem because…?’ Bree waited delicately for Jenna to fill in the gaps.
‘Because,’ Jenna snapped, ‘it’s entirely possible they may dig up a massive secret, and I promised that would never be allowed to happen! Surely you remember that?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Bree said. Jenna heard her take a breath. ‘But to be completely accurate, Jen, it was Marris who promised that that would never happen, not you. It was 500 years ago,’ she added. ‘Would it really be the end of the world if it all came out now?’
‘You’re the one who keeps reminding me that we have the same spirit and soul as our Tudor predecessors,’ Jenna said dryly. ‘Now you’re telling me that it doesn’t matter that we keep faith with them?’
‘I’m asking you if it matters,’ Bree corrected.
‘Who knows, it might be a good thing if it all came out. A good thing for archaeology, I mean.’ She sounded animated.
‘Remember the excitement when they found King Richard III’s body in that car park?
It was huge. This would be like that, only different, obviously.
The whole six wives of Henry VIII thing would explode!
You thought you knew everything about Anna of Cleves, the boring one? Well, think again!’
Jenna sighed. She cast another surreptitious look over her shoulder and lowered her voice still further.
‘I don’t feel we’re quite on the same page with this, Bree,’ she said.
‘For now, can you simply accept that I feel I cannot let either Marris or Anna down, even if 500 years have gone by? In fact, the half-millennium makes it even more important. This is fundamental to me, to who I am. To who we are. Why do you think we came back now? Why this second life? It must be to protect the secret.’
‘Hmm.’ Bree sounded unconvinced. ‘I still think you’re getting carried away, Jen. The excavation may not even find the box—’
‘Forget it,’ Jenna interrupted. ‘They are searching for Father Nicholas’s tomb because they’ve heard the legends about a burial of a local saint here. And if they find that…’
‘They find the box,’ Bree finished. ‘Right. So much for us placing it in Father Nicholas’s mausoleum because we thought no one would ever disturb the grave of a revered local saint.’
‘The rules that applied in the 1540s are out of fashion now,’ Jenna said dryly. ‘No one is superstitious about digging up dead bodies any more. So now you can see why this is so urgent. It’s only a matter of time before the whole secret comes out.’