Chapter 6
THE PRESENT
‘Do you recognise this?’ Jenna pulled up a photograph on screen and pushed her phone across the table towards Bree.
They were in a café in Wantage market square; through the bow window she could see King Alfred’s statue looking in their direction, his gaze stern, direct and very Victorian.
The town itself was a pleasing hotchpotch of historic periods with timbered buildings jostling with Georgian townhouses, and even on this chilly winter day the market stalls were busy.
‘Um… what?’ Bree spoke through a mouthful of lemon drizzle cake.
In the artificially lit café, she glowed like a flame, her long, dark auburn hair clashing gloriously with her bright yellow jacket.
(‘I had red hair last time!’ Jenna remembered her saying crossly when they were children.
‘I wanted blonde hair like Molly this time!’) Bree wore stunningly discordant colours with aplomb and it worked.
‘You’ve either got style or you haven’t,’ Bree had once said, with a sideways look at Jenna’s classic jeans and jumper.
‘I thought we were here to discuss grave-robbing,’ Bree said, just loudly enough to make Jenna flinch. She managed not to shush her sister. Telling Bree to tone things down usually only made her louder.
Bree reached for the phone, putting a smear of icing on the screen. There was a moment of silence whilst she looked at the blurred image of the portrait from Winterhill Hall which Jenna had found on the internet after a long search.
‘That’s you,’ Bree said, staring at her sister. ‘Or rather, it’s Marris. I painted it.’ She made a slight gesture. ‘I mean, Bridget did it.’
Jenna felt her heart thump. ‘I thought it must be one of Bridget’s,’ she said. ‘It’s in her style. But why did I not know about it?’
Bree scooped more cake up. Jenna, who was having tea and an apple slice, felt unreasonably irritated by the delay. But Bree was always like this; her appetites came before anything else.
‘Will commissioned it from me,’ Bree said eventually. ‘He wanted a keepsake of you when he was sent to the Low Countries.’
‘How sentimental of him. I never knew.’ Jenna swallowed hard against an unexpected lump in her throat.
Whereas Bree always spoke of their Tudor life with a degree of detachment, she was unable to separate out her memories from her current emotions.
She wished she could be more like her sister, in that one respect at least.
‘I’ve never seen it before,’ she confessed. ‘I don’t think he ever showed it to me – I mean, Marris. I wonder why not?’
‘You quarrelled soon after that,’ Bree reminded her.
She sighed. ‘Don’t you remember that you and Will separated after he returned to court?
Perhaps he couldn’t bear to look at it afterwards, so he hid it away?
’ Her gaze softened. ‘Will loved you – loved Marris – so much. I always envied you that, you know.’ She grinned. ‘You were so hot together.’
Jenna’s lips twitched. ‘I seem to recall that you had your fair share of courtly love over the years.’
‘Oh…’ Bree shrugged. The light had gone out of her eyes. ‘I had love affairs. And I had my books and my art and pretended to prefer them, but the truth is, I would have enjoyed finding true love as well.’
‘What about in this life?’ Jenna asked. She knew that Bree had had a series of short, high-profile relationships over the past few years because, like everything else, she made no secret of it.
However, her sister was only twenty-eight and recently she seemed to have become a great deal more reticent on the subject of her love life.
Jenna had wondered if that was because someone had come along who was genuinely important to her, and so for once, she had kept it quiet.
But Bree was shaking her head, her gaze sliding away from Jenna’s.
‘You know me,’ she said evasively. ‘There was someone years ago, but I was too young to handle it and now it’s too late.
’ She pulled a face. ‘Let’s just say that I’m not great at commitment.
’ She tilted her head interrogatively. ‘I don’t suppose you have found anyone to match Will?
I always hoped it would be possible that if we could be reborn, so could those we had loved.
In fact, I’m sure it is, but it’s finding them, isn’t it?
’ Her tone turned bitter. ‘And keeping them.’
Jenna hesitated, thinking of Owen. She had had that same all-consuming rush of feeling on seeing him that Marris had experienced with Will and she still wasn’t sure whether it had been an illusion, conjured by her own imagination.
‘It’s a nice idea,’ she said, ‘but probably not that straightforward in reality.’
‘Do you think your memories of Marris’s relationship with Will have actually made it more difficult for you to find anyone in this life?’ Bree was as tenacious as a terrier when she was on a particular topic. She could shake it to death. Jenna knew there was no diverting her.
‘Yes,’ she said crisply. ‘I’ve dismissed almost all the men I’ve ever met because I’ve been measuring them against Will and found them wanting. Now can we get off the topic of my love life and back on to the issue of the archaeological excavation?’
‘In a minute.’ Bree was pointing with her spoon and looking triumphant. ‘I think you’ve met someone!’
‘What?’ Jenna could feel herself turning pink. ‘How could you possibly know that?’
‘I can tell.’ Bree was grinning. ‘Who is he?’
Jenna shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t tell you that even if it were true. And it isn’t. I met someone a few days ago whom I really liked, but it didn’t come to anything.’
‘At Winterhill?’ Bree was alight with curiosity. ‘That makes sense if it was an echo from the past—’
‘Like I said, nothing came of it,’ Jenna said, cutting her off. ‘And thank goodness it didn’t. It would all be far too complicated.’
‘If you get the chance, you should just grab it,’ Bree grumbled. ‘You think too much, Jen.’
‘Whatever.’ Jenna didn’t want to dwell on that because she knew there was more than a grain of truth in what her sister was saying.
She looked down again at the photograph of the little portrait, the golden-red haired woman wearing the rounded French hood of a deeper crimson adorned with pearls.
It had suited her; whereas the demure English gable hoods framed the face squarely, this flattered the curve of her cheek and line of her jaw.
Bridget had been a good artist, although young and untrained.
She had captured something of both Marris’s confidence and vulnerability in the bright eyes and slightly smiling lips.
‘Where did you find it?’ Bree had followed her gaze. ‘I can’t believe it’s turned up after all this time.’
‘Someone told me that it used to be on display in Winterhill Hall,’ Jenna said.
‘I hunted around online and found this one image. Apparently, the picture had been lost for years but they found it about a decade ago and they’ve just had it restored.
’ She looked up and smiled at her sister. ‘I must admit it looks good, Bree.’
‘Well, of course.’ Bree accepted the praise as hers as well as Bridget’s.
‘Anyway…’ Jenna put the phone away. ‘Let’s get to the present-day problem.’
‘The excavation at Winterhill Priory.’ Bree finished the cake and sat back with a disappointed sigh. ‘Do you really think they will dig up Father Nicholas’s tomb?’
Jenna checked the coffee shop to make sure no one was listening.
Fortunately, there were only a few other people in there: a man reading a newspaper, a couple who seemed wrapped up in each other and a group of friends chatting.
None of them were close enough to overhear or seemed interested, and she told herself not to be paranoid.
‘I think it’s highly likely,’ she said. ‘They’re interested in locating his grave. The lady chapel is an obvious place for them to survey and when they do that, they will probably spot some unusual grave goods in with him, which will no doubt make them even more curious.’
‘Huh,’ Bree said. ‘What a nuisance.’
‘Exactly.’ Jenna mimed a request for another tea and a cappuccino at the barista who smiled and gave her the thumbs up.
‘And you still feel that you need to safeguard Queen Anna’s papers, even after all this time.’ Bree made it a statement rather than a question. She toyed with the crumbs on her plate. ‘You know I don’t really understand that. Why you still feel the need to protect Anna at a distance of 500 years?’
‘I don’t understand why you don’t get it,’ Jenna countered.
Suddenly she felt very tired. On one level, Bree was right.
Anything that came out about Anna of Cleves in the present day could not hurt her.
It would no doubt fascinate people who were already obsessed with the Tudor dynasty.
But to Jenna – to Marris – Anna had a been a real person, a friend, not merely the fourth queen on the list of King Henry VIII’s wives.
Anna had saved her once, in another life; she had saved Bridget too.
Keeping Anna’s secrets safe was a small thing that Jenna felt she could do in return.
‘It’s not the papers as such,’ she said now, ‘it’s the secrets that they contain. It would be sensational if it came out that King Henry VIII and Anna of Cleves had had a son together. My God, can you even imagine it?’
‘Yes,’ Bree said. ‘I can. Like I said last time, it would be at least as spectacular as finding Richard III’s body. A historical phenomenon. People would be thrilled.’
‘I daresay,’ Jenna said, ‘although the academics would be arguing for years over whether or not the papers were a forgery, and they would want to find and DNA test the descendants and we could never explain how we knew the papers were genuine, least of all prove it.’
‘Agreed,’ Bree said. ‘But…’ She shrugged. ‘You know I like a bit of chaos. It could be fun.’