The Secrets of Saffron Hall

‘Word comes your cousin has arrived?’ the prior eventually said.

‘He has,’ she replied, distracted from her thoughts, and she explained about the train of people who had accompanied him.

‘It’s perhaps better not to antagonise him,’ Father Gregory reminded her, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid. She needed to keep on the right side of her cousin: her situation was precarious and he owned the roof over her head. Eleanor frowned and nodded – she understood what was expected of her.

As she gazed out of the window, she realised the shadows were beginning to lengthen. A gentle snore from Prior Gregory alerted her to the fact that she had stayed too long and she slipped through the door into the Lady chapel, dipping her fingertips into the holy water and crossing herself before sinking to her knees in the gloom at the back. Closing her eyes, she murmured the vespers, the familiar evening prayers, whilst the deep plain song continued as a background to her murmuring. The flickering candlelight threw wavering shadows of the hooded brothers across the rough walls and vaulted ceiling. Eleanor lifted her head for a moment, letting the sounds of her childhood seep into her body. She was balancing on the cusp of a new life, all that was familiar about to disappear from beneath her.

Getting up from her knees, she crept through the door and back into the meadow where dusk was creeping in. It wasn’t wise to be out after dark, especially when the house was full of strangers. She had no desire to meet any of them outside the protective walls of home.

Chapter Three

2019

The unusually warm late September weather clung on to the last traces of summer, as if loath to let it segue gracefully into autumn. Day after day of dense oppressive heat left the air thick and humid, congesting their lungs. Before she went to bed, Amber opened her windows as wide as she dared, concerned about how old they were. She didn’t want them to drop out of the stone mullions. It didn’t help though; the heavy, petrified air hung still and silent both outside in the hall grounds and in her room.

She listened to the familiar sounds of the house as it creaked and settled for the night. At her feet, Grandad’s huge ginger cat, Gerald, was already curled up fast asleep, oblivious to the sticky conditions. Thinking she’d never be able to sleep, Amber lay down on top of the duvet with her T-shirt sticking uncomfortably to her skin.

She must, however, have dozed off, because she was suddenly woken by a crash so loud it scared Gerald into a shrieking orange ball of fluff. When she opened her bedroom door, he shot out. Her room was lit up by a brilliant harsh blue-white light, which stung her eyes and made her wince. It was swiftly followed by another crack similar to the one that had woken her, a noise that sounded as if the earth were being split in two, followed by a booming and grumbling rolling away into the distance. Then came the welcome sound of rain, big droplets splattering onto the ivy outside. Quickly she shut her windows but left the curtains open, watching the streams of water coursing down the little panes of glass as the storm raged on. She’d bet money Gerald had changed his mind about going outside, and had found a dry spot to curl up somewhere downstairs.

As the wind howled around the building, an almighty bolt of lightning hit the house. Amber heard a loud bang and a sizzling noise as if something somewhere was frying. Gingerly she opened her bedroom door and poked her head out, sniffing the air for the smell of burning. The house was in darkness, but she couldn’t smell anything untoward. When she flicked the switch for her bedroom light, nothing happened. The electricity was off. She heard shuffling and grumbling from Grandad’s room and she cautiously inched towards it. The last thing she wanted was for him to fall in the dark.

‘Grandad, are you all right?’ she called into the silence following another crash of thunder, which vibrated beneath her feet. ‘The electricity’s gone off.’

‘Yes, I’m awake – hang on.’ She heard his door open a little way along the corridor and as the sky was lit up again, she could see him momentarily silhouetted in the doorway.

‘Don’t come out of your room,’ she called to him. ‘I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.’

‘I’m fine,’ he tutted. ‘We’ve a lightning conductor on the top of the tower. I expect it’s been hit and frazzled; it won’t be the first time. There’s nothing we can do until daylight though. Can you smell burning?’

Worried, Amber sniffed the air again. ‘No I definitely can’t,’ she confirmed.

‘That’s fine then, we’re not on fire.’ He sounded quite cheerful as his words were drowned out by yet another ear-splitting crash outside and the corridor was lit up once more.

Amber gave out an involuntary squeal. She’d never been afraid of storms, but this was something else. ‘Are you sure we’re safe here?’ she asked as her heart rate began to return to normal.

‘Of course.’ Grandad chuckled. ‘This house has survived five hundred years of weather; we’ll be fine. It may end up losing a few slates from the roof. We can check them in the morning. Try and get some sleep now.’

She paused for a moment listening to him bumping into furniture, followed by the creaking of springs as he climbed back into bed.

The idea of sleeping through the noise outside, the rain still battering against the window, was laughable. After making her way back to her room she was about to shut the door when she heard the scampering sound of claws on parquet flooring. Gerald raced back in and disappeared under her bed.

Eventually as dawn began to break, the storm moved away to be swallowed up by the North Sea and Amber managed a couple of hours of fitful sleep before being woken by Gerald, with a full bladder, scratching at the door wanting to go out again. Slipping on her dressing gown she followed him downstairs, where his fluffy posterior disappeared out of the cat flap. There was no sign of Grandad even though he was usually an early riser and it was already light outside.

Pushing her feet into a pair of Grandad’s far too large wellington boots she’d found beside the back door, Amber stepped outside. The air felt crisper, clearer, and she drew in her breath, enjoying the cool freshness in her lungs, smelling the damp earth and scent of wet vegetation where it had been battered the night before. Mint, chives and wet roses assailed her senses as she splashed through puddles on the old broken brick path leading to the vegetable patch. She was pleased to see the glass in the greenhouse was still intact. Grandad would be relieved.

The lawns were littered with branches and twigs, the remains of the last of the summer flowers scattered across the grass, but Amber barely had time to register them as she plodded on in the cumbersome boots until she came to the reason for the crash they’d heard the previous night. Strewn on the ground at the base of the tower, supposedly the oldest section of the building, were various pieces of rough masonry and stone. She looked up at the tower and could see nothing structurally amiss, although she suspected the local conservationist and listed building planners would disagree with her. Her archiving work would have to pause while she sorted this out.

She retraced her muddy footsteps inside and started to make phone calls to find out when their electricity would be restored and enquiries over the correct protocol regarding the damage to the tower.

By the time Grandad arrived in the kitchen it was past nine o’clock and Amber had organised everything she could, although by that point she was becoming desperate for a hot drink and some toast.

‘It’s not just us without power,’ she reported. ‘There are cables down between here and Downham Market. It may be off all day, but they’re working on it.’

‘No television for me today then.’ He pulled a despondent face as he flopped down into a chair at the table. ‘But if that’s all we’ve suffered, we can’t complain.’

‘Actually, it’s not all,’ she warned him, explaining about the stonework she’d found at the base of the tower. ‘I can’t see where it’s come from, but I called the listed building people at the council about getting a builder and they’re coming out to look themselves. If the roads are clear they should be here this afternoon, but when I spoke to them they didn’t know if there are any trees down around here.’

Amber was delighted when just before lunch the lights flickered and then came back on. She and Grandad were tucking into bacon sandwiches and their second cup of tea when a banging on the front door announced the council officers had arrived to inspect the tower.

‘I must admit I wasn’t expecting you to come out so soon,’ Amber told them as she took them around the outside of the house. ‘If you can maybe suggest a builder, I’ll call them to come and have a look.’ It was obviously the wrong thing to say. The older of the two men stopped in his tracks making his younger assistant almost cannon into him.

‘Mrs Morton,’ he began, his voice deliberately slow as if he were talking to a five-year-old, ‘this building is grade two listed, little short of a national monument. It may be your grandfather’s home, but it’s also part of this nation’s history and as such you must use a specialist historical building restorer, not any old cowboy you find on Google.’

Amber ground her teeth together as she tried to think of a response that wasn’t as condescending as the way he was speaking to her. The younger officer looked suitably embarrassed and gazed around the garden not meeting her eye.

‘I’m well aware of the history and provenance of my family home, thank you,’ she replied, her voice cool and modulated, ‘which is why I asked you here to view the damage, and to suggest who I could call. I have no intention of just searching for someone on the internet.’ She strode away across the grass to the tower, stepping over the pieces of debris still lying on the lawn and leaving the two men to follow in her wake.

‘So, here’s the stonework, but I can’t work out where it’s from.’ She spoke directly to the younger man as he and his colleague removed monoculars from their pockets and used them to silently examine the top of the tower. Eventually he cleared his throat and replied.

‘I suspect the crenellations took a direct hit from the lightning last night,’ he told her. ‘I can see one of them is broken, but it looks to be the least of your problems. There’s a crack from the roof about a third of the way along the façade on this side. It travels down to the window frame. You need to get that looked at urgently.’

‘So, can you suggest someone who can have a look?’

‘We’ll leave you a list of approved contractors. They’ll have to put up scaffolding first to be able to look properly. It won’t be cheap.’ The older man had spoken and he almost sounded pleased. Amber’s urge to slap him increased. She screwed her hands into fists.

‘No problem,’ she said airily, ‘there’ll be insurance to cover it,’ whilst fervently hoping her assumption was correct.

Within two days, Kenny Clarke, a specialist restoration builder together with his son Pete arrived with a lorry load of scaffolding. It was stacked up outside the house for three days whilst they, and what felt like a dozen scaffolders, banged and crashed, whistled, laughed and shouted as they slowly erected a huge metal cage around the tower. Amber tried to hide in the office, having realised on day one that if she was spotted in the kitchen, someone would appear at the back door with their tray of mugs and a hopeful smile. It was usually Pete, who had intensely blue eyes that sparkled every time he grinned. There were no prizes for guessing why the other workers always sent him to ask for cups of tea, although when she’d tried to engage him in conversation, she’d discovered that behind his rugged good looks he was very shy.

Now, sat in front of her laptop, a pile of dusty, worn 1950s detective novels on the desk beside her, she couldn’t concentrate. The room felt wrong; however, she couldn’t put her finger on what was different. As far as she could see none of the furniture had been moved and given the depth of the dust that covered everything, it would be easy to spot if any of the ornaments had been altered. In fact, there was something odd right through the house and whatever it was, she could feel it most strongly in the library, at the base of the tower. With the poor light from the small windows now obscured even further by the myriad of scaffold poles, the room felt strange, edgy. As if it wasn’t happy with the work going on outside, which was a ridiculous notion she told herself. Nevertheless the atmosphere had been disturbed and sometimes she was certain someone was watching her, although a quick check of the room proved what she already knew – she was on her own.

Within hours of the two men starting their investigations, Kenny was at the back door, carrying a small package, and asking if he could speak with her and Grandad. His usual joviality had abandoned him, and after inviting him into the kitchen and offering him a chair at the table, she went through to find her grandfather.

‘It’s a lot worse than I could see from the ground,’ he began as soon as they were all sat down with yet another cup of tea. ‘There’s some major structural work that needs to be undertaken. The crack we spotted is bigger than I first thought and will carry on crawling down the tower wall until the whole corner shears away and it’ll all come tumbling down. The window frame is so loose we had to remove it before it fell out and all that ancient glass got broken. Pete found this on the window ledge.’ He put the package he was carrying on the table in front of Amber.

Even before she picked it up she knew it was something special and a sharp tingle crawled along her arms, making the hairs stand up. A small rectangular block, roughly wrapped in a clump of embroidered brown linen, frayed at the edges. It was enveloped in a musty smell, with a whisper of spice and incense, reminding Amber momentarily of her and Jonathan’s home and his ancient church next door. As she held it in her hands, she could feel the air around her shiver and distort for a moment. Sliding it onto her lap she tried to listen to the conversation between the other two. Whatever was contained in the old piece of cloth had piqued her interest, but she wanted to look at it when she was on her own.

Following further discussions about the work needed, and despatching Kenny back outside with more tea and some chocolate cake for both him and Pete, Amber went to her office, holding the package tightly against her chest. Laying it on the desk, she gently lifted away the linen wrapping, now yellowed and brown with age and darker still in patches. As she began to unwrap it, her senses were alerted to the pungent, evocative scent of decrepit books and bitter herbs that washed over her and she closed her eyes for a moment. It infiltrated the room like a spirit, there, but not there.

The perfumed air reminded her momentarily of Jonathan and his church. Of his ordination and the soaring voices of the choirboys as they sung the ‘Ubi Caritas’, the words spinning across the vaulted ceiling in veneration, while her husband in his black robes lay spread-eagled on the floor that vibrated with the deep powerful notes from the organ. The coloured light streaming in from the stained glass windows shone through the smoke from the incense, creating a misty rainbow. She’d never understood his intense passion for theology and his absolute rock-solid belief in his faith, but now, she wished more than anything she also had that rock to cling to, and save her. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the faint fragrance settle on her. It was underpinned by a sharp, almost metallic tang of a pungent spice she couldn’t place.

Amber turned the fabric over in her hands, examining the heavy embroidery. It looked ancient. Unwrapping it carefully, she lifted it away from the object it covered. She drew her breath in sharply, realising with a shock what she was holding. A tiny leather-bound prayer book, its thick cover enclosing gossamer-thin pages.

Inside the front cover, surrounded by coloured illuminations, exquisite religious illustrations still as bright as the day they were completed, and written in an old English styling that made Amber screw her eyes up, it read:

Sir Greville Richard Lutton, born June 1508

Eleanor Lutton, born 29 November in the year of our Lord 1520

Beneath, in a similar vein and with decoration, was written:

Jane Elizabeth Lutton born 7 August 1534

Henry Greville Lutton born 15 May 1539

A further entry, less illustrious simply said:

Thomas Lutton July 1539

Below the entry for Thomas, it read:

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

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

She swallowed hard. It appeared Mary, just like her own daughter, her tiny Saffron, had not survived her birth. The absolute worst experience that any parent could go through. A pain etched on her heart forever. And why had the author of those words added Mea culpa? How could she possibly think it was her own fault? Although Amber knew exactly how that felt, the all-consuming guilt. Opposite the frontispiece, that first page with the list of births, something else was written in Latin, but scrawled untidily as if written quickly, with none of the artwork that decorated the other page. Amber’s eyes caught on the first line, which, she was pleased that due to her profession, she was able to translate.

infans filia sub pedibus nostris requiescit

‘A baby daughter lies beneath our feet’

What did the inscription mean? Was it an epitaph to Mary? She could feel her heart beating harder. It was as if the book had found her, had been waiting in the tower for her to be united with it. She and Eleanor, the original owner hundreds of years ago, had a connection through the most painful of reasons, two mothers grieving. Her suspicions were confirmed: this book was definitely very old. Had it been here in Saffron Hall all the time?

Although the house was a fraction of the size it once was, she knew from the records and research already done that in medieval times it had once been a sizeable castle. A book of hours, a small personal prayer book such as this scribed by hand and not printed, probably dated from the fifteenth century, maybe even earlier. It must have been very special to Eleanor. What a find. The air around her crackled and for a moment she thought she’d heard a whisper as the fabric of the building sighed and shifted slightly, almost in anticipation. She was desperate to decipher the rest of the Latin passage, to discover if it referred to Mary.

Chapter Four

1538

‘Sir William has asked to see you,’ Joan announced breathlessly as she hurried into Eleanor’s bedroom, where she’d been hiding for most of the day, playing cards and watching the relentless rain outside as it threw itself against the window, as if demanding entry. She slapped another card down on the table.

‘Why?’ She didn’t raise her head. Since her cousin arrived a week ago there had been much coming and going of people she hadn’t seen before, but nobody had bothered her. She’d hoped they’d forgotten she was there, but evidently not.

Joan shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, flapping her arms as if to make her companion move with more haste, ‘but it was more of a demand than a request, so best not to keep him waiting. You know how important it is to us both to keep on the right side of him. We are now here as his guests; we no longer have any rights.’

Eleanor tucked the wayward strands of her thick unruly auburn hair under her linen coif and pushed her feet into soft leather slippers, before walking down to the great hall, her steps measured and steady. There was no need to fear a meeting with her cousin, she told herself, although every hair on her skin prickled in trepidation and her shaky breathing belied her external confidence. Joan had spoken wise words: they were now at the mercy of her cousin and although she hated the situation, she needed to remember that. She sensed a tension in the air as if everybody was poised and listening, waiting for something dreadful to happen, and she didn’t like it.

She found her cousin sitting before the fire with Lady Margaret. At the other end of the room, platters were being laid out on the table for dinner, and her stomach rumbled loudly. Since everyone had arrived she’d chosen to eat in the kitchen after mealtimes rather than in the great hall, and usually there was little remaining decent food by the time she got to eat. The sharp scent of burnt fat and roasting meat wafted across the vast room towards them, making her salivate.

Eleanor dropped a brief curtsey and stood waiting for William to speak, her eyes staring at the floor.

He twitched his head slightly in acknowledgement. ‘Eleanor, finally you honour us with your presence.’

She couldn’t think of a response, doubting he’d actually noticed that other than mass she was absent as often as she could be, so she kept her lips pressed shut and said nothing. He sat in her father’s favourite chair, and Eleanor bit down on the inside of her mouth to stop fierce tears from welling up as he indicated the stool beside him and she sank down onto it. The rushes, the dried grasses strewn on the flagstones for cleanliness close to where he sat were damp from spilled ale and beginning to smell. Eleanor couldn’t help screwing up her nose in disgust. Her father had always been meticulous about keeping the grasses and lavender dry and fresh, smelling sweet, and it relieved her he was no longer there to see what was happening to their home. William cleared his throat loudly, and she was pleased to see even Margaret winced at the disgusting sound.

‘Eleanor, my son Robert will arrive within the week. It’s just what this house needs, a family to fill it. You understand that it’s no longer your home.’

She opened her mouth to point out he was now the closest family that she had, then shut it again, without saying a word. She could tell by the tone of his voice she was an inconvenience to be disposed of as soon as it was possible. Just as she’d suspected. The convent loomed large on the horizon.

‘Luckily for you, I have made an agreement for you to marry Sir Greville Lutton. He is a rich merchant and courtier with extensive lands in Norfolk and is prepared to take you, despite the lack of dowry left by your father.’

Aghast, Eleanor didn’t open her mouth to argue, shocked into silence. She sat unmoving and not breathing for a few seconds. Marry? Her? And who was this Sir Greville Lutton he spoke of?

She knew plenty of girls were wed by the age of seventeen, but she expected to be consulted, given a choice as her station dictated, as her father would have wanted. As a baron who distinguished himself at the Battle of Flodden and had later been appointed the high sheriff, he would have expected to do this for her. If he hadn’t died so suddenly. To her astonishment Sir William waved to a man on the periphery of a group at the other end of the hall who got to his feet and strode over until he stood in front of Eleanor, and then bowed deeply. He was here, now?

‘Cousin Eleanor, Sir Greville Lutton.’ William made the introductions as if he were supremely proud of himself. He probably was, having successfully rid himself of a relative cluttering up his new home. She looked up at the stranger. He was considerably taller than William and slimmer, with strong, broad shoulders. His dark hair was clipped short as was his beard, and he looked at her with concern. Lines fanned away from his dark brown eyes, and she could just about make out heavy eyebrows. He looked considerably older than she was.

William and Margaret made a big show of disappearing to join their friends for dinner, but suddenly Eleanor’s appetite had deserted her. Instead she thought she may well vomit at any moment. Greville sat in the seat William had just vacated and leant forwards, his forearms resting on his knees. His jerkin, doublet and hose were entirely in black, giving him a menacing look.