The Secrets of Saffron Hall

THE SECRETS OF SAFFRON HALL

Clare Marchant

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Clare Marchant 2020

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph © Lee Avison/Trevillion Images (background), Mark Owen/Trevillion Images (woman)

Clare Marchant asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008406271

Ebook Edition © August 2020 ISBN: 9780008406288

Version: 2020-06-30

PRAISE FOR THE SECRETS OF SAFFRON HALL

‘Emotional and intense, this is a page-turning story of secrets that echo through time’

Rachel Hore, author of The Love Child

‘A rich and vivid historical story, The Secrets of Saffron Hall is one of those rare books that is totally engrossing. I loved it’

Nicola Cornick, author of The Forgotten Sister

‘The past and present are skilfully entwined in this captivating and emotional debut’

Heidi Swain, author of The Secret Seaside Escape

‘An intensely gripping, emotional read that kept me turning the pages until the early hours of the morning. An atmospheric story sure to please all fans of timeslip novels’

Christina Courtenay, author of Echoes of the Runes

‘Emotive, immersive and compelling, a beautiful story that captures the heart’

Liz Fenwick, author of The Path to the Sea

‘This pulled me in and didn’t let me go: a page-turner with such historical depth and tender touch that it enchanted my heart. I adored it’

Laura Jane Williams, author of The Love Square

‘Intriguing and fascinating, a real insight into a turbulent time in England’s history’

Kathleen McGurl, author of The Secret of the Château

‘A beautifully written story that pulls you in and whisks you away to another time. Clare Marchant is a fabulous new talent’

Rosie Hendry, author of the East End Angels series

‘A charming and engaging mystery, beautifully told’

Jenni Keer, author of The Hopes and Dreams of Lucy Baker

Dedication

For you, Mum, who always believed in me.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Secrets of Saffron Hall

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

1541

Her hand trembled as she dipped the quill into the ink and wrote the words, the script barely legible as hot tears scattered across the parchment and soaked in, swelling the fibres.

Mary, in the arms of our Lord 17th November 1541

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

Outside, the dark expanse of heavy grey cloud lay so low it was almost touching the tops of the bare trees. The bitter, icy wind threw sharp flecks of snow at the windows, whistling through the numerous gaps to find its way inside and curl raw fingers around her weary bones. It scarcely mattered. Her heart was already frozen, a hard painful lump, weighted in her chest. No amount of wool garments and fur-lined cloaks could warm her now.

Eleanor knew the chances of such a small baby who’d been born too soon surviving were slim. An impossible wish. But watching her daughter’s perfect features turn to alabaster just minutes after she’d arrived in the world was more than she could bear.

And now she sat in the tower, her body poised and still as she listened for the drum of approaching hooves, announcing the arrival of the king’s men. Never had she needed her beloved Greville more, but he wasn’t coming. The damp rushes at her feet were stuck together in clumps with the blood she’d lost. Her whole body ached. She wanted to lie down on the cold stone floor and let her life slip away with the blood still trickling from her. It stained her hands, darkening them where it had dried, stretching the skin tight over her knuckles.

They needed to leave and soon, very soon. Already they had tarried longer than she’d intended, and there was no time to do what was needed. All she could do was hope that by leaving this message someone would be able to decipher what she was asking, and answer her plea. Her eyes strayed across the floor against her will, drawn to where Mary now lay. Could she hear something? A whimper? The thin cry of distress? No, it was just her fevered imagination and the wheeling gulls buffeted by the winter winds outside the window, crying with her.

With shaking hands she began to write. infans filia sub pedibus nostris requiescit …

Finally, taking a pressed saffron flower, together with a sprig of rosemary, she laid them gently between the pages, and closed the book.

Chapter One

2019

‘Would you like me to help carry anything?’ Grandad leant in the study doorway, a mug of tea in one hand and a stack of custard creams in the other.

Amber looked up from the dusty box she was emptying, piling the contents onto the front of the desk where she was fast running out of space. Her pallid face was thin and pinched. Deep shadows smudged like bruises under her eyes reflected the hours she lay awake at night, whilst all around her slept.

‘Grandad, you can’t lift them. Don’t even think about it!’ she admonished. Biscuits were probably the heaviest thing he could carry these days.

‘You look too pale,’ he observed. ‘You should eat more.’

Amber ducked her head back into the box she was emptying and rolled her eyes. ‘I’m always this colour. It goes with the red hair.’ Her parents had used little imagination when they’d named her Amber. Standing up, she placed a handful of old London A–Zs on top of a precarious pile of almost identical copies, dating from the 1950s. ‘Really?’ She indicated them and raised her eyebrows. ‘Were you thinking of doing The Knowledge?’ She gave him a wry smile.

It was Grandad’s turn to roll his eyes. ‘Don’t change the subject,’ he told her, frowning from beneath his overgrown eyebrows, now almost white, but still holding faint traces of his own auburn colouring.

‘So, I’ve set up a spreadsheet to catalogue everything,’ she carried on as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘and I’m noting the location of the books in the house so you can find them later when you decide what to do with them.’

‘That all sounds very efficient.’

‘It’s what we agreed,’ she reminded him. ‘My skills as an archivist in exchange for bed and board.’ And a place to hide – she left the words unsaid. ‘It’s just as well I’m here for a year because I expect it’ll take that long to log all your books. There are thousands. I knew about the library of course, but I had no idea you’d filled the attics with who-knows-what.’

‘Well, that’s the problem when you’re a book dealer,’ he defended himself. ‘At auctions sometimes you have to buy a job lot when there’s only one book you actually want. I imagine everything in the loft is rubbish, but it needs going through first.’

‘Hmm, rubbish is probably the right word,’ Amber commented, adding a further two A–Zs to the pile and balancing a tattered copy of Malory Towers on top of some Jackie Annuals. She had to stop herself from flipping through some of the books she’d found, or the mammoth task would never be finished. At least there was plenty of reading material for the long, lonely nights. The dark hours when it was preferable not to fall asleep, because then she had to wake up, and remember all over again.

Grandad dunked one of his biscuits in his tea and tried to flip the soggy half into his mouth. These days his reactions weren’t as fast as they once were, and she heard him curse under his breath as it plopped back into his drink, sinking out of sight. The stroke that had left him with an imperceptible limp and a slight slurring of words when he was tired, had taken its toll on his left arm leaving it weakened and for the most part, useless. And being left-handed made the disability all the more cutting. After a lifetime of quick wit and lightning reactions, she could feel his frustration every day as the new body he inhabited failed him.

‘And how are you?’ He was always tentative about asking, but she was fading more and more every day. Shadows darkened her face, and he could no doubt see pale blue veins tracking across her forehead where she’d pushed back the strands of her short wispy hair.

‘Oh, you know, I’m okay.’ She knew exactly what he was referring to, but she wasn’t ready to talk about it. Not yet. She smiled at him although the wobble at the corner of her mouth belied her reply.

‘I may be old,’ he said a little too sharply, ‘but I’m not stupid. As well as being as thin as a rake, you’re looking washed out. You should eat proper food, not just soup and toast or cornflakes. It would help, you know.’ His mouth quirked and he raised his eyebrows. His eyes crinkled slightly, a small acknowledgement of his harsh words. ‘And every time I go into the kitchen, I find cups of tea you’ve made but not drunk. What’s that all about?’

‘I don’t sleep well.’ She shrugged. ‘Making tea is a comfort. A little routine I can do without thinking about it, to help clear my mind.’ Sometimes, it kept the demons at bay, just for a few minutes, she reflected silently. ‘And actually, I don’t remember my eating habits being part of our agreement – I’m here for some peace and solitude, and no nagging, thank you.’ She moved to another box and began to slam its contents onto the last unoccupied corner of the desk. A thick layer of grey dust rose into the air, a cloud of tiny motes effervescing in excitement at being set free, dancing in the weak sunlight that struggled to filter through the grimy windows. Amber suspected they hadn’t been cleaned in the decades since her grandmother had died.

After squashing the now empty box flat with undue aggression, she threw it into the corner of the room on top of a small mountain of similarly battered cardboard. Grandad watched in silence as she pulled another one towards her and ripped the top open, lifting out a handful of books and piling them up.

‘I thought your being here and having something to take your mind off … things, would perk you up. But that doesn’t seem to be happening yet. Maybe …’ he held his hand up slightly as she opened her mouth to interrupt ‘… being out here in such a remote location wasn’t such a good idea. Perhaps if you were with your parents, if you don’t want to be with Jonathan, it would be better for you? Kinder for your soul? Sometimes, isolation in troubled times isn’t the answer.’

Amber’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. ‘Er pot, kettle? Why did you hide yourself away in this big old rambling house after Grandma died, to run your business from behind closed doors? If you recall, you dumped Mum on Gran’s family and then ran away to bury yourself in the back of beyond. So excuse me, while I follow in your footsteps. Call it genetics if you like.’

She threw herself down onto the office chair behind the desk making it roll back slightly, and tried not to grind her teeth together. The hall had been in their family for generations and it was part of her essence, her core. It echoed with the souls of their red-headed ancestors and it had seemed only natural to return here when her life had been wrenched apart, to hide from the world. Although she loved her parents, their relationship was often strained and she felt closer to Grandad. She needed to be with him at that moment, and at the hall. So the last person she’d expected to question her decision had been Grandad himself.

As Amber sat down, her grandfather realised that she’d built a wall of books on the desk around her, and was now completely concealed from view. A barricade behind which she was hiding, yet again.

‘Just because I did it, doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do,’ he said into the void where she’d been standing. Turning carefully, letting his legs catch up momentarily with his brain, he returned to the living room and the two-thirty race at Kempton Park.

Once she was sure he’d left the room, Amber got to her feet again. She rubbed at the familiar tears that had started falling with the hem of her T-shirt, tilting her face upwards to try to stop them, but it was a futile gesture. The tracks were almost permanently engraved on her face, so many times had they snaked their way down, to drip off her small, pointed chin. She expected to wake up one morning with the lines indelibly marked on her cheeks forever more, like tattoos. A visible stain of her sorrow, to show the world what a terrible person she was, a failure. Life was hard enough, without a lecture from Grandad, the king of running away, sixty years hiding in this mausoleum of a house.

She’d only got a year’s sabbatical from the university, during which she needed to sort her life out, somehow. Decide if she and Jonathan had anything worth saving. The crushing grief, now a familiar friend, lay heavy on her shoulders as she walked through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea she wouldn’t drink.

Chapter Two

1538

From her room, Eleanor could hear the frantic commotion in the courtyard below, men shouting to the stable lads and servants, together with the impatient stamping of horses’ hooves against the cobbles. The bustling entourage that had arrived seemed huge. Nobody in the house was used to this number of guests and the noise they brought; Eleanor included.

Despite her reservations, she knew what protocol dictated. Her dear father had instilled good manners in her from an early age, and so she prepared to descend the stairs and greet Cousin William, now the owner of her home. It appeared he’d arrived not only with his family, but also a great many others.

By the time she reached the top of the stone staircase, accompanied by Joan, her companion and best friend, the great hall was swarming with people, the stench of damp wool clothing rising up and making her wrinkle her nose. Her eyes flitted amongst them to ascertain which of the many gentlemen, most of whom were still wearing their thick riding cloaks, was her cousin. Watching as the kitchen boy darted about offering jugs of ale, her glance caught on a pair of pale, flinty eyes, which narrowed on hers as they met, and locked. The woman was clothed in a heavily embroidered deep green velvet travelling cloak and stood beside a small, stocky man. Eleanor looked at Joan and together they both raised their eyebrows. Joan smiled and gave her a little nod of encouragement, before leaving her and returning to their room. She needed to do this on her own.

Eleanor pushed her way through the jostling people who hardly noticed her slight form, until eventually she found herself in front of the couple she’d spotted from the gallery above. Close up, William was barely taller than her own five foot three inches, his rotund body topped by a florid face, sweating profusely. Curtseying to them both, she greeted them.

‘My lord, lady, welcome to Ixworth. I hope you will be very happy in your new home.’

‘Cousin Eleanor, how lovely to meet you.’ What he lacked in height, he made up for with the volume in his voice. Eleanor winced slightly as a gust of stale, beery breath assailed her nostrils. ‘This is my wife, Lady Margaret.’

Eleanor repeated her curtsey with lowered eyes, but once upright again she stared into the piercing shards burning into her. Why did this woman hate her so much? Her animosity was leaking out of every pore on her pockmarked face. Her fine clothes and furs, the row of pearls sewn onto her fashionable French hood, failed to detract from the ravages her skin had taken. These people were moving into her wonderful home, taking everything her father owned because William was his heir and Eleanor merely a girl who could very soon be homeless, or despatched to a convent. Margaret should be dancing around the room in delight, not looking as if she may shatter into a million pieces at any moment.

‘Our fine son, Robert, will arrive in a few days,’ William continued. ‘He is but a year old and has a slight fever so will follow from Richmond when he is well, and a nursery has been established for him here. We’ve come straight from court and are of course sorry we were unable to arrive in time for your father’s funeral.’

He didn’t sound very remorseful, and a series of images flickered momentarily across her vision of the sparse funeral procession behind her father’s coffin as it made its way from the home he’d loved to the chapel where he was interred beside her mother.

‘Sir William will be sorely missed by the king,’ Margaret informed her, ‘and I cannot imagine what we will do in this godforsaken wilderness.’ Her long nose was screwed up and Eleanor began to realise why she was looking so out of sorts. She bit back the retort that they were more than welcome to return to court because she didn’t want them in her home. Except, it was no longer hers. She suddenly couldn’t stand the crowd, the oppressive heat and reek of unwashed bodies a moment longer.

‘Please excuse me,’ she muttered, before darting through the mass of people towards the door.

Once outside, she paused for a moment in the cooler damp air, taking big gulps. She’d been used to seventeen years of isolation and peace; how would she live with a house full of noise and clamour all day long? It was unbearable.

Looking across the pasture, her eyes lifted towards the pale cream sandstone of the priory walls, rising from the marshy ground that surrounded her home. Under the wing of the much larger Thetford Priory, this was a smaller and self-sufficient institution, the monks mostly a law unto themselves. As always it offered her the sanctuary she craved and without a second thought she gathered up her skirts, her feet flying across the ground towards it, running through the waist-high grasses along the well-trodden path.

Slipping through the battered oak door in the priory gardens, Eleanor let her breath out slowly, watching it form into vapour in front of her. Here, she was safe. The empty garden that lay before her filled her heart with calm. The fruit trees and rows of herbs and vegetables, immaculately tended by the monks, were a comfort. Despite the late hour, the swifts were still flitting above her head catching insects, and a pair of finches argued loudly together in a nearby fruit bush. Whatever happened at home, this small corner of her world was a constant. The soothing regularity of the brothers at their daily work, the chanting from the chapel as the flow of the Latin prayer washed over her and cleansed her soul of the uncharitable thoughts she’d had about her cousin.

Bending down, she tugged off a sprig of thyme, rolling the tiny green leaves between her fingers and thumb and sniffing at the pungent aroma they released. A slight rustle disturbed her thoughts, and looking up she saw Brother Dominic making his way towards her. He was her favourite of all the brothers, a dear friend, and Eleanor couldn’t help a wide smile spreading across her face, her childlike innocence simmering inside her. A feeling that had been all but extinguished in the past few months.

‘Are you visiting, or hiding?’ the young monk asked as he grew level with her. He’d only been ordained into the priory the previous year and was not much older than Eleanor herself. She saw in him a kindred spirit, someone who had to conform to the rules laid down, against their better judgement. His eyes, the clearest green she’d ever seen, sparkled mischievously at her under his raised eyebrows, already sure of the answer to his question.

‘Of course I’m here to visit,’ she replied. ‘If nobody knows this is where I am, that is merely a useful coincidence.’

‘Has your kinsman arrived yet?’

‘He has, along with his wife and a large retinue of other people. The hall was full. I greeted them, before leaving them to settle into their apartments. I doubt anyone will miss me for a while. Or at all.’

‘Then come inside and take a cup of mead. The prior will be pleased of some company – he is feeling pained again. This cool air and the damp doesn’t suit him. I have made a poultice with cloves and pennyroyal, but it does not seem to ease his aching.’

‘You could add some feverfew?’ she suggested. ‘Or oil of bay berries if you have any?’

‘I think we do. That’s a good idea, thank you. I’ll go and look right away.’

Eleanor found the prior, Father Gregory, in his private solar. From here the sound of the plain song, the deep melodic singing of psalms that undulated and swayed like trees in the wind was louder, making the stone beneath her thin slippers vibrate. He passed her an earthenware cup, and she sipped at the honey wine, feeling its warmth steal down inside.

Perching herself on the edge of a bench, she closed her eyes as the peace and serenity of the building rolled over her. She’d visited the priory with her father on almost a daily basis, for as long as she could remember. And now it was her sanctuary, a place where the soft call of routine never varied. All around her change was coming, plucking at her clothes, pulling her in through the sounds of horses’ hooves and the shouts of strange men. The news from London grew more concerning, that the king was closing many convents and monasteries and threatening to sweep away the once ordered life she’d known. What would the future hold for her friends? A prickle of fear and premonition crawled down her spine.