Chapter 7
When I came outside, I immediately smelled smoke. It drifted toward me from the bottom of the garden, and a thick plume rose into the sky, bringing with it the smell of smoldering wet leaves. I followed my nose and found myself in a clearing, where a man, who had to be well into his seventies, was raking leaves and pushing them into the flames. He was so intent on his task, he didn’t seem to notice me.
“Hello,” I called out.
He raised a hand, the reddened tips of his fingers protruding from well-worn fingerless gloves. “Mornin’,” he said.
“I’m Nicole Rayburn,” I said.
“Colin. Colin Briggs. You one of the new batch?”
“Yes. I arrived yesterday.”
“How do you find the place?” Colin asked. He’d stopped raking and was now looking directly at me. On closer inspection, I thought he was younger than I’d first thought, and stronger. Beneath his cotton shirt, his arms were thick with muscle, and his face was tanned from hours spent outdoors.
“It’s a beautiful house. I haven’t had time to explore the grounds yet, but I took a walk down to the reservoir just after breakfast.”
“Had to see the tower, did you?” he asked, a note of disapproval creeping into his voice.
“Yes,” I admitted, feeling as if I’d done something to be ashamed of.
“Don’t see the attraction myself.”
I considered his age and what that might mean and plunged in. “Did your family used to live in Ashcombe?”
“They sure did. My grandfather was the vicar of St. Botolph’s,” he said angrily. “My parents were married in that church and I was baptized there, as was my sister. They dug up my grandparents and my mother, who died when I was a child, and moved their remains to a cemetery.”
“They didn’t rebury them at the local graveyard?” I asked. A cemetery was not attached to a church as a graveyard was, and I assumed that was the source of Colin’s anger.
Colin shook his head. “They needed to leave room for current residents, so they buried the remains from Ashcombe at a newly created cemetery, miles from where they died.”
“Colin, may I ask you something?”
“Sure,” he said, returning to his task.
“Brittany mentioned someone named Alys haunting the house. Is there anything you can tell me about her?”
Colin stopped raking again, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Why? Want to write about our Alys, do you?”
“I thought it might make for a good story,” I replied, wondering if he found this offensive somehow. “Can you tell me what happened to her?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Colin replied tersely.
“Surely there must be if her name is still being bandied about after all this time,” I said, sounding more peevish than I meant to.
Colin leaned on his rake. “My gran used to say that sometimes a woman’s only crime is to be born too pretty or too clever for her own good.”
“Was Alys too pretty or too clever?” I asked.
“Not clever enough to see what was coming for her,” Colin said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”
I walked away, feeling like I’d been dismissed, which I had been. Colin clearly didn’t want to talk about Alys or whatever had befallen her. I found a dry bench and sat down, my gaze straying toward the imposing façade of Lockwood Hall.
My mum would have said that now I really had a bee in my bonnet. She’d always loved those old-fashioned expressions. My eyes misted with tears. Nearly a year had passed since she died, but some part of me refused to accept that she was gone forever. I talked to her all the time in my head, my mind effortlessly conjuring up her end of the conversation. It brought me comfort, possibly because as of a few months ago, I was all alone in the world, at least in any way that mattered.
Resolutely pushing my grief to the back of my mind, I forced my thoughts to the problem at hand. In the space of a half hour, two people had all but rebuffed me when I asked them about a local legend. Why? When traveling or doing research for my previous books, I’d never found people reluctant to talk about local lore. In fact, most people were eager to share the stories that made their tiny corner of the world seem more exciting. And it wasn’t just the pleasant happenings they told me about, since there really weren’t that many, given our country’s bloody history. They told me about carnage, betrayal, looting, and sacking of the religious houses. They showed me ancient burial mounds and fields, where the battles that had shaped the future of England had been fought. And they certainly didn’t shy away from talking about the treatment of women.
What had happened to Alys that still had the power to disturb all these years later? I planned to write a fictional account, but I was a historian at heart and longed to know the truth, and what I needed was the help of an expert.
Chapter 8
Alys
Unable to face Bess after her conversation with Will, Alys walked away from the village, striking across the meadow and heading toward the woods beyond. She needed to be alone for a while, away from Bess’s sly glances and Will’s smugness at having resolved the problem of his unmarried sister. Alys walked until she tired herself, then sat on a fallen log, her head in her hands. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine a life with John Selby. The very thought of his hands on her made her shudder with revulsion and dread.
