Chapter 31
NOW
Ollie had a strange look on his face. He was tracking something above Violet’s head, looking out of the window. His face turned from fearful to knowing, and his lips tilted up at the edges into a little smirk. His eyes glazed over and he suddenly seemed very far away.
‘Ollie?’ Violet was cautious.
‘She wasn’t that innocent, you know. She did things that nobody should ever do.’
A chill ran up Violet’s spine. The voice that had just come out of Ollie’s mouth was nothing like Ollie’s.
‘Who did things?’ she asked in a careful, measured tone.
Ollie transferred his gaze to her, and there was a horrible spark of recognition and yes, hatred, behind those eyes.
‘Oh Meggie,’ he said, looking directly at her, as if she was Meggie and it was perfectly normal for him to converse with her. Yet his voice was low and menacing. ‘It’s not over.’ He dropped his head and folded the napkin on his knee.
Violet didn’t know if she wanted to slap him to see if he was messing with her, or whether she wanted to run away from the table.
All she knew was a strange mix of loathing and disgust was coming over her as she stared at him.
He looked up and their eyes met and he smiled that awful smile that she had seen on the man in the reflection, and she knew without doubt that this was not Ollie speaking.
She had a horrible feeling that this was Charles Milburn, and fear began to gnaw at her.
Then as soon as it had come, the look disappeared and it was Ollie’s face and Ollie’s eyes. ‘If he did cause all that, he’s a fucking bastard. Sorry, but he is.’
Violet just nodded. ‘Yes. He is.’
Ollie leant forward. ‘The research I did – there was a copy of a letter that had been sent to Charles Milburn with an invoice in it. A whole load of stuff has been digitised at the Northumberland Archives, all about Manor Houses, where you can see who wanted to surrender land to someone else. I looked up Milburn Hall, and found it. It was from someone called Ned Bell who had an address at Pipewellgate in Gateshead – some sort of lodging house in a slum, I think. He’d fallen on hard times and was asking payment for a job he’d done, at Milburn’s behest. It said he’d worked with Cuthbert Nicholson and Milburn owed him twenty shillings for the work he’d carried out in December 1650, but he would be happy to have some land transferred to him if a cash payment wasn’t possible, given interest on the sum owed etc, as he had never been paid, and was trying to call in his debts—’
‘Cuthbert Nicholson? That was the bloody Witch Pricker! The one who came here from Newcastle. He escorted the Scottish Witch Pricker here for the trials in 1649. Jesus, Ollie. That’s the link.
’ Violet was genuinely scared now, but she didn’t know why.
‘Did they send Ned Bell money? Give him a reward? Good God. Twenty shillings was the price on a witch’s head—’
‘No.’ Ollie shook his head. ‘It was returned with a note that Charles Milburn had died, and the land therefore was no longer in his control. That’s where my trail went cold and I knew he’d lost all the land and the money and all that.
Thankfully, a clerk or the estates manager or whoever it was diligently copied the original letter and the response, and filed it with the family papers.
It was signed by someone called Emory Milburn, but when I went back on the parish records and things, there was no record about an Emory Milburn being born into that family.
But he was the one who inherited everything – some random relative who appeared out of nowhere, I guess.
Do you think that…’ Ollie hesitated, seemingly unsure if he could continue to verbalise the train of thought.
But Violet finished it for him. ‘Yes. I do think that. I think that the job Bell did was to help Nicholson with Meg’s trial, and then for some reason, he didn’t get paid – thanks to this Emory character.
But if it was at Charles Milburn’s request, then it seems as if he was the one who called Meg out. Just like we suspect.’
‘But wouldn’t Bell have said it was a Witch Trial?’ asked Ollie.
Violet looked at him as if he was mad. ‘Would you admit to that, Ollie?’
‘No. No. I wouldn’t.’
‘There you go then.’
They held one another’s gazes, both, it seemed, uncomfortable.
Then Ollie seemed to shake himself out of it – whatever ‘it’ was.
‘God. Sorry. I think it’s best if I head off.
Might go back to Hexham. Might just pretend to be the Lord of the Manor for a bit.
’ He stood up, scraping his chair back. ‘Pretend it didn’t all go to shit with old Charlie boy.
See you later, Violet. Maybe. If I don’t leave and go home first.’
Ollie strode off across the dining room without a backwards glance. Violet watched him go.
She was 100 per cent convinced that Charles Milburn’s genes were in Ollie, passed down through the generations. It was in his height, his build, his hair – it all reminded her of the man she’d seen sitting on that horse away from everyone in that reflection…
And the letter Ollie had mentioned seemed to prove it.
But Violet couldn’t get the image of Ollie’s face out of her mind. Well – not Ollie’s face, but the expression that reminded her far too much of that Charles Milburn.
She looked out of the window and saw the snow was still falling, but the car park had been cleared, and she could see beyond that the roads were fine – Jake was presumably still digging himself out of the campsite, and she didn’t really want to hang around the guest house.
Meg’s life and death, and the path that had led to that moment, all seemed a little close to home right now. And Violet wasn’t enjoying the proximity.
She’d ring Jake and see if she could go and rescue him, perhaps. He might very well fancy a trip somewhere.