The Secrets of Saffron Hall

Dawn was creeping slowly over the horizon, soft shards of light beginning to beckon them forwards. Behind her, the hall and the abbey beyond rose up in a dark silhouette against the skyline and, with a heavy heart, Eleanor kicked her horse forward. Greville followed behind as they rode out of the courtyard, and she willed herself not to look back.

The four-day journey to Milfleet was every bit as arduous and dreadful as Eleanor had suspected it would be. She could hardly blame Greville for misleading her as he had given her fair warning, but nevertheless her mood soured with every mile that passed. The landscape barely altered, a flat expanse of damp, boggy wilderness, rushes as far as the eye could see, broken up occasionally on higher ground by a few rough longhouses or shacks. At first Greville had kept up a running commentary, but as Eleanor’s face grew dark eventually he gave up, riding beside her in silence.

When they finally arrived, it was gone midnight. Twice Eleanor’s mount had stumbled in the dark, and once she had almost slid off the horse as she fought sleep. Her mood had not improved. The full moon had helped them keep to the narrow dusty track and now it shone down on the castle-like hall, behind which lay ponds, the water still and shining in the moonlight, like glass. Up ahead there was the sound of chains and men shouting as the huge wooden gates below a gatehouse opened to allow the party access to the courtyard beyond. It appeared to be full of people waiting for them.

Gratefully, Eleanor slid down from her horse, pausing momentarily as she felt Greville’s big hands around her waist steadying her. After so many hours in the saddle her legs were numb and frozen and without him there, she was sure she’d have stumbled. She kept her gaze steady, looking into his deep brown eyes surrounded by thick lashes she hadn’t noticed before, and tried not to show the fear that coursed through her veins. When he offered his arm she took it without a word, and he led her into the great hall.

Inside was bright with burning candles, every corner and alcove lit, and what looked like a dozen or so dogs, milling around everyone’s legs. They seemed delighted to see their master, pushing each other away as they shoved their heads against Greville, making him laugh loudly as he shepherded them out of the way.

The great hall was unlike anything Eleanor had ever seen or imagined, the huge space far eclipsing that of Ixworth. The ceiling soared up to elaborate decorations and carved beams, not the rough-cut ones she was familiar with, and even the candle sconces on the walls were ornamental. The walls were covered in thick, deep-piled tapestries depicting hunting scenes and Roman gods in battle. At one end of the room stood a long trestle table, bare of cloth, along which were glowing pewter candlesticks. It all seemed so huge in comparison to everything she was used to, and Eleanor felt small and insignificant. She wondered how she would ever live in this cathedral of a room; it was completely overwhelming. She began to realise her preconceived ideas of Greville’s home and his wealth and stature together with that of Norfolk in general, may have been incorrect. Despite Greville’s fine clothes and horses she had convinced herself that his home would be grim and austere with few trappings of luxury, echoing the landscape in which he lived.

Someone offered her a cup of ale, which she drank down quickly, not realising how thirsty she’d become. Joan appeared at her elbow and helped remove her travelling cloak. Without it she felt exposed and felt herself shiver, despite the huge fire that roared in the wide fireplace, taking up almost half a wall. She wrapped her arms around herself.

‘Are you cold?’ Greville asked, steering her towards the fire. ‘Stand here, where it’s warmer. Are you hungry?’

She shook her head.

‘Let me show you to your bedroom then. You can meet everyone tomorrow when you’re not so tired.’ Putting his arm around her body to guide her through the throngs of people – everyone who lived on the estate seemed to have turned up to meet his new bride despite the late hour – Eleanor found herself climbing a set of dark polished wood stairs, the finials and bannisters intricately carved into oak leaves and autumnal fruit, all shining like freshly exposed conkers. She spotted Joan following them, together with a large hairy hound that seemed rather attached to her, despite her frantic attempts to shoo it away. Greville just chuckled, seemingly unperturbed at the beast being upstairs.

Opening a door, he ushered them both into a bedroom, much larger than the one Eleanor had occupied at Ixworth. Here, another fire was blazing and Greville quickly lit the candles. One wall was hung with thick tapestries, the other three panelled with linen-fold wainscoting, which glowed in the firelight. He pulled aside a heavy curtain in one corner and indicated a large walk-in anteroom, which contained a bed, built into the wall.

‘There’s a bed here for Joan—’ he pointed, before indicating the opposite corner ‘—and through that door is my bedroom.’

Eleanor couldn’t even see where the panels ended and the door began, but her surprise at him having a separate bedroom was written all over her face. She’d anticipated that despite the long journey, he’d be expecting to share her bed tonight. It appeared she was wrong.

‘Before I leave you, I have a wedding gift for you.’

He went through the dividing door into his own room and reappeared seconds later carrying something small, which he placed in Eleanor’s hands. It was smooth, and had the faint tangy scent of treated skins. The sharp smell reminded her of sitting with the scribes in the abbey as they spent laborious hours writing texts and illuminating them with brilliantly coloured inks, and gold leaf. She’d often sat and practised alongside them with discarded quills and scraps of parchment or vellum that were no longer needed. She’d never have the steady hand or eye for detail they did, but she was able to complete passable, if rather naïve illustrations. It was an enjoyable way of spending the long winter days when bad weather could keep them confined for weeks at a time. And she’d acquired a lot of knowledge whilst chatting with them, learning from their experiences in the stillroom and infirmary. Her handwriting – with all the practice she’d had – was small and neat. A skill that would no doubt be useful when she was helping Greville.

She turned the object over, examining it carefully. A small, heavy book, it was barely larger than the size of her hand. The leather front had been tooled into elaborate patterns and swirls that looked like new ferns, curled around a crest, decorated with brilliant colours. She opened it slowly and looked inside at the Latin words inscribed within.

‘Is it a prayer book?’ she asked, delighted. ‘It’s beautiful, thank you.’

‘It is.’ He nodded. ‘A book of hours. See here, it has the stations of the cross.’ He showed her the richly illustrated images of the Good Friday journey and accompanying prayers. ‘And here—’ he turned to some other pages ‘—are saints days and feast days. It was my mother’s, given to her by my father on their wedding day. There are blank pages throughout the book. He had them added for her to write in anything she chose – her thoughts, or prayers. But she didn’t use them, so the book is still waiting for someone to make proper use of it. I hope that you’ll fulfil my father’s wishes.’

Eleanor smiled. She was certain she’d have no problem doing that.

‘This is your crest?’ she asked, touching the raised design on the front.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘and now it is yours, too. Given to my grandfather together with this hall, as thanks for his loyalty by Edward the Fourth. See here, there are bulrushes to denote the fenlands we live in, and also here, a heron. This is our family motto.’ Taking Eleanor’s hand, he ran her fingers over the Latin inscription at the bottom.

‘Dum Spiro Spero,’ she read. ‘While I breathe, I hope.’

‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘There are times in all our lives when everything appears bleak, or broken,’ he told her, ‘but we must never lose hope that things will get better again.’ He looked deep into her eyes as if he was searching her soul and reading what was written there. Maybe he understood more of her distress, how lost and alone she felt, than she gave him credit for. Eleanor gave herself a little shake, and tore her eyes away.

‘Thank you, I shall treasure it always,’ she told him.

‘In case you’re wondering, Jane’s mother had her own prayer book, which is why fortuitously I still have this one. I think you’ll find more use for it.’ His beard, always neat despite the long days of travelling, tickled as he bent to kiss her on the cheek, warm against her cold skin, and then he was gone.

Around the edges of the room were stacked the various chests that the two women had spent the past ten days packing, but Eleanor was too tired to find a night rail to sleep in. As soon as Joan had helped her undress, she crawled beneath the covers of her new bed in her shift and lay down wearily as Joan pulled the drapes around her. She didn’t hear the sounds of her companion sinking gratefully onto her own mattress, as she dropped into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Seven

2019

Amber’s phone pinged with the arrival of a text and glancing down at the screen she sighed, stabbing repeatedly at the power button in frustration until the screen finally went dark. What had begun as an occasional enquiry about her wellbeing was now beginning to feel slightly overbearing and uncomfortable. She knew Jonathan was worried, and she really needed to speak to him to allay his concerns. Not least because if she didn’t, he’d start calling the house phone to speak to Grandad, and it took the poor old man ten minutes just to get out of his armchair and stagger to the phone.

He wouldn’t leave her alone. She’d already explained on numerous occasions she hadn’t left him or bailed on their marriage, but she couldn’t be home with him at the vicarage at the moment. All that was there merely reminded her of what wasn’t there. He’d cleared out the nursery and put everything up in the loft thinking it would help, but in fact he’d made things worse. As if Saffron had never been. But she was a real person, their daughter. A surprise pregnancy after a course of antibiotics that resulted in her pill failing to work. Amber had been horrified when she’d first seen the two blue lines appear on the test. Jonathan as ever had been far more pragmatic and then within days he’d morphed from sensible, to wildly excited. It had taken Amber several months before she accepted what was happening and had begun to look forward to the new addition to their family and share in Jonathan’s mounting excitement. Now, she was crucified with guilt at her initial lack of happiness.

Amber knew if she stood at the window in the now empty nursery, she could see across to the graveyard to where her baby lay. Jonathan found it a comfort being so near; he visited the grave every morning before he unlocked the church. She’d seen him from the window, his lips moving as he talked to their daughter. Or maybe he was praying. She couldn’t ask because she didn’t want to admit she’d been watching him. At first she’d drifted around the vicarage in a fog, unable to concentrate on anything. Picking up books and putting them back down, unread. Making cups of tea she wouldn’t drink. Until after a couple of months, she knew she had to find somewhere she could breathe again. A familiar place that was calling her home.

It was only a ninety-minute drive home from Grandad’s and initially she’d agreed to return home at weekends, but that had soon petered out. Jonathan was always working on Sundays and usually prepping for services the day before, and it was a long way to drive just to cook a roast dinner and spend little time together.

And now that he wasn’t able to monitor her physical and mental decline in person, he’d taken to texting several times a week. She’d persuaded him it was better if she rang him at a convenient time so she didn’t disturb Grandad, but the text messages were now increasing. All she wanted was some peace to breathe, and to grieve for her daughter in the way she felt able to.

Grandad was taking his morning stroll, although Amber had discovered this actually meant walking from the back door to his greenhouse. He sat in there on his gardening stool every day, whatever the weather, looking out over his extensive vegetable plot, which was now completely overrun with weeds. The troublesome unruly plants had grown, for as long as she could remember, throughout the carefully regimented beds from which over the years he’d nurtured enough vegetables to feed the entire British Army. Against the pale brick of the walled garden, espaliered fig trees still produced buckets of fruit every year, most of which lay on the floor, a feast for insects before the autumn rains rendered them down into a sticky molasses of compost.

But he wasn’t able to do the physical labour any longer. She knew he hated the weakness he’d been left with following his stroke, and she doubted he’d ever really accept the way things were now. He still made plans of things to do when he was well again, and she hadn’t the heart to tell him that day may never come.

Taking advantage of having the house to herself and knowing she ought to return Jonathan’s messages, Amber switched her phone back on and walked through the house to find somewhere she could get a decent signal. It was definitely better at the front of the house, but even then it wasn’t brilliant. She’d once suggested to Grandad that she climb the tower to find a decent signal, but he’d been vehement in his response, shocking her. And now with the scaffolding up it was structurally unsafe and the door to the stairs remained, as it had always been, locked. Nothing would dissuade him from his decision. He admitted it had been inaccessible for as long as he could remember and nobody knew where the key was, but she was certain there was more he wasn’t telling her.

The library, however, was the best room for a phone signal. It wasn’t a place she normally frequented, with the ancient leaded windowpanes letting in dozens of minuscule draughts. Little freezing stabbing knives. That was the problem with a listed building such as Saffron Hall: nothing could be replaced, so no chance of sensible and efficient double glazing, and the family had to live with the consequential cold. No wonder that in the winter Grandad sat in the gloom most of the day with the thick old curtains drawn to keep the heat in.

Her phone finally locked on to the weak signal and buzzed at her. Looking at the screen, she discovered not one but four texts and a missed call from Jonathan.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ she muttered scrolling down the texts. They started politely enquiring about her health and asking if they could chat, but by the fourth it said starkly, CALL ME, AMBER, JUST BLOODY CALL ME. He might be iffy about taking the Lord’s name in vain, but Jonathan was not particular about swearing if he thought the occasion deserved it. Pressing his name in her recent call log – in fact the only name in her call log – she held the phone against her ear, listening to the noise as it connected and imagining him sitting in his study and snatching his phone up, almost dropping it in his hurry to answer it. Jonathan had an A level in clumsiness.

‘Hi, Amber?’ He sounded breathless.

‘Yes, just me. Is this a good time?’ She picked up a discarded pen from the sideboard beside her and started clicking the lid on and off, on and off.

‘Of course, yes. I was just cutting some of the last dahlias to give to the women on the flower rota this week. They’re a bit windblown but they’ll do. The flowers I mean, not the volunteers. Sorry, I’m rambling. How are you?’ His voice tailed away and she felt compelled to fill the silence she knew would stretch between them until she spoke. She could visualise him, his eyes darting around as if that would help him find the words to say.

They had been such a great partnership from the first time they met when she’d been unlocking her bicycle outside her digs in Cambridge and he was stood there unlocking his own. He had immediately made a favourable comment about her brilliant yellow Doc Martens boots, although she didn’t explain until much later the connection between the vibrant hue of her footwear and the name of her ancestral home. Grandad had bought them for her eighteenth birthday and she adored them. It hadn’t taken long for her to feel warm listening to his deep melodic voice, and she’d invited him to a gig that some friends were playing at in the college bar that evening. Since that day they’d never had a moment when they couldn’t think of something to say to each other. Until now.

‘Oh well, you know, much the same as usual. Still working hard on Grandad’s books.’ She went on to explain about the recent damage to the tower. ‘There hasn’t been much time to do anything else. I’ve been out for a walk when it’s sunny, but that doesn’t happen very often.’

‘Yes the weather’s been much the same here.’ They could both get a qualification in small talk.

‘How about you? Anything exciting in Little Walpole?’

‘Well, there is something I want to tell you, which is why I wanted to speak with you, instead of the infernal texting. This is something that needs to be said out loud.’

For a second Amber’s heart beat wildly in her chest and sharp prickles of heat crawled across her face despite the cold draught from the window. Jonathan rarely had anything important to tell her. Had he got fed up waiting for her to go back to her old self, the Amber she used to be? Was he calling time on her retreat, or on her and their marriage? It had originally been her suggestion she took some time out and went to stay with her grandfather, to clear her head. He hadn’t been keen on the idea, but when Grandad suggested she could catalogue his book collection, Jonathan had wavered and eventually agreed that maybe it would help.

She realised she’d missed his first few words as she tried to tune in again to what he was saying.

‘… So I didn’t think you’d mind if we went ahead and had it erected. Tony came yesterday afternoon and I helped him do it. It felt important to me I was involved, for Saffron. And it looks just right. I think you’ll be happy with it. The Yeats you chose is absolutely perfect.’

Amber realised with a jolt he was talking about the headstone for Saffron’s grave. It felt so long ago they’d chosen it, she’d forgotten it still needed to be put in place. Her eyes smarted as the familiar tears welled up and rolled down her face. The view from the window, the expanse of flat fields beneath the sorrowful wet sky blurred into a wobbly tableau of grey and sepia like an Impressionist painting.

‘I hadn’t realised it would be finished yet,’ she admitted, sniffing loudly, ‘or the ground already settled.’

‘Will you come home and see it? I think it’ll help. I know it has for me. It’s more permanent and a proper symbol she was here. It’s telling the world we had – have – a daughter.’

‘Yes of course, I’d like that,’ Amber replied. She could almost hear the smile on Jonathan’s face as if he’d been expecting a different answer. He suggested a day the following week when he had no work and they could have lunch as well. Amber winced. She didn’t think she could face the hours of idle chitchat he’d expect. She wasn’t the same person anymore; she’d changed forever. If only Jonathan could realise that. Grandad was used to a quiet life and rarely indulged in aimless chatting, so since arriving her ability to conduct lengthy mindless conversations had dwindled to almost nothing. She agreed reluctantly she’d meet him at the vicarage late morning on the day he’d suggested, before ringing off.

Saffron’s headstone. It all felt so final as if everyone else, Jonathan included, was moving on. Except she couldn’t. She was flailing in her own personal purgatory. A pause between her life and no life, just the darkness she inhabited every day. They still didn’t have any official explanation as to why their precious daughter’s heart had stopped beating. One day everything had been fine, she was a week overdue, the baby was kicking well and the next, nothing. It had been several hours before she’d realised she had felt no movements. If only she’d noticed earlier and gone to the hospital then, they might have been able to do something. Her fault, it was all her fault.

The stillness surrounding them when the doctor looked up from the scan machine and told them there was no heartbeat. That their baby was dead. A gaping silence sucking the air out of the room and leaving them in a vacuum as they processed the information. Then there was a rushing in her ears, a roaring noise that she realised was coming out of her mouth, but she didn’t know how to silence it. And that sound might now be internal, but she still couldn’t make it stop.

Amber slumped against the window frame and shut her eyes. It was her fault that instead of being on maternity leave with her beautiful daughter, she was on a year’s sabbatical, compassionate leave while she tried to learn how to live this new life. The one with a huge cavernous hole in it, because she hadn’t insisted the doctors induce the birth as soon as her due date came and went. While Saffron was still alive. For accepting the medical assurances that anything up to ten days late was perfectly safe. But seven days later they’d discovered it wasn’t.

Running her fingers through her short hair she gripped them into fists, pulling the hair taut but not feeling the pain. She was numb, icy; she couldn’t see a way to ever feel normal again. As she rubbed the heels of her hands hard into her eyes she smeared the wet and salt down her face, and shivered. The room felt even colder than before. As she turned towards the door, she stilled. There was a shift in the air. A momentary feeling she wasn’t alone in the room, and yet she could clearly see she was. It was similar to the way her arms ached sometimes because she was sure she could feel the weight of Saffron lying in them, but she knew it was impossible. They were empty.

It felt so real that someone had been in the room with her for a brief moment. And there was just a hint of a strange smell. Honey, and something metallic. Was she starting to lose her mind? She’d had some counselling after Saffron and was told that with grief, anything was possible. It was simply her addled brain playing tricks on her, wasn’t it?

Chapter Eight

2019

‘What time are you leaving?’ Grandad asked.

‘About ten o’clock I think. Traffic will be slow if this weather doesn’t ease off.’

‘Don’t worry about dinner this evening if you want to stay at home with Jonathan. There’s plenty in the freezer for me.’ Carefully he scooped a blob of marmalade out of the jar with his knife, and they both watched its unsteady journey to his toast.

‘No, I’ll definitely be back. I only agreed to lunch because by mid-afternoon I can be on my return journey. Jonathan knows I don’t enjoy driving in the dark. I’ll do an hour’s work now before I go, then I’ve not wasted the whole day.’

Grandad raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sure “wasted” isn’t the correct word.’

‘Well, no, not visiting Saffron. I don’t know about anything else though.’ Amber looked down at the cup of tea in front of her, a filmy skin beginning to form on the top. She’d spent most of the night trying to ward away the bleak thoughts crowding her head. Today was a day she couldn’t avoid. At some point she had to see Saffron’s headstone. She was already hurting so much, it could hardly make her feel worse. And then a strained lunch with Jonathan. Despite loving and missing him, conversely she didn’t want to see him. To talk about everything – no doubt she’d be expected to discuss her mental state. Or answer difficult questions about how much longer she’d be staying with Grandad, or how far she’d got with her book archiving. Even in the depths of her despair, she knew she wasn’t being fair to Jonathan, shutting him out when he needed her, but she couldn’t find a way to let him in.