Chapter Thirty-Five

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

JULIET 2018

Juliet spent the second week of December in a haze of happiness untainted by any of her usual anxieties. Even as a child she'd been careful about showing what she felt, an instinct honed to razor sharpness from the years with Duncan. But Noah Bennett was the most open, unguarded person she'd ever met, and she found enormous relief in letting go and not worrying about herself or him or what was happening or what was going to happen.

They spent the whole of one Saturday entertaining Rachel's three boys. Noah set up a game that had them racing to carry trash from the third-floor rooms to the dumpster, mopping floors, and dusting windowsills. Though Juliet felt a few moments of piercing loss for what Liam would never get to do, mostly she enjoyed this world of uncomplicated affection and belonging.

Noah had to return to Newcastle to work, but they spoke every night and counted down to his ten-day Christmas break.

"Your family doesn't mind you staying with me during the holiday?" she asked him one evening.

"Rachel just grins in a maddeningly know-it-all way, and Aunt Winnie said of course you need company seeing as how you can't leave Havencross at night. Though I'd wager they all know that company isn't the only thing I'm offering."

In between sorting, cleaning, and Noah, Juliet explored the boxes Nell had brought. The solicitor's files were as meticulous as her appearance, which definitely made life easier for a historian.

One collection consisted of newspaper reports and copied field notes from the excavation carried out on Havencross property the summer of 1919—the one from which the coins and livery badge Juliet had seen in Berwick had come. The notes confirmed the likelihood of the ruined icehouse being the terminus of a tunnel, but there had been no recorded efforts to find the opening at that time. Juliet set all this aside for Noah's professional eye and moved on.

She followed the legal property ownership backward, starting with the tangled family trust that had ended with the hotel financiers buying them all out. Nell Somersby-Sims and Juliet's mother were two of five surviving descendants of Sir Wilfred Somersby and his second wife, Sylvia; those descendants had inherited their shares in Havencross after Clarissa Somersby's death in 1992. It was Wilfred's father, Gideon, who had built the flamboyant structure around the medieval core, after clearing out the remains of the Elizabethan and Georgian additions. Although the officials' handwriting grew harder to read the further back the photocopied documents went, the property of Havencross could be traced through previous Somersby owners all the way to Queen Mary Tudor. In 1554, she had assigned "the property and estate known as Havencross, presently held by the crown, in the county of Northumberland, to Henry Somersby, knight, in recognition of his devoted service to the queen in maintaining her right to the throne."

There were a handful of other papers in the same file—two covered with notes and questions Nell Somersby-Sims had made, plus photocopies of two documents written in Latin. With an exaggerated sigh of difficulty—she was really very curious—Juliet opened a Latin-to-English translation app on her phone to double-check Nell's handwritten translation on the back of the page.

The first was brief and direct: on 29 June 1461, Edward IV confirmed " the absolute rights and honors of the property of Havencross in the county of Northumberland to the Lady Ismay Deacon and her heirs in perpetuity. "

The second was slightly more complicated.

" On this first day of November the Year of Our Lord 1471, the property and estate known as Havencross in the county of Northumberland reverts to the crown. Said property to be held by the crown without prejudice or favor in the interests of a proven heir to the previous owner, Lady Ismay Deacon. Said property not to be assigned to anyone but said heir for a minimum of seventy years. By order of His Gracious Majesty, King of England, Ireland, and France, Edward R., signed by his own hand this day at Westminster ."

Curiouser and curiouser. Juliet talked it over with Noah by phone later as she did her nightly sweep of windows and doors, making sure everything was locked and closed and not leaking as Northumberland sullenly made its way toward Christmas with freezing rain.

"It sounds to me," she said, "like something more happened here than just a simple death. If Ismay Deacon and her family had died out, then why would the king have put in that clause about not giving away the property for seventy years? It's like he expected—or hoped—that someone would show up with a rightful claim to Havencross."

"And," Noah pointed out, "why would the king himself care? That bit about signing it in his own hand—I'm sure he had whole organizations to do that kind of business. You should take photos of all this and send it to Daniel in Berwick. It's his period; maybe he'll have ideas about where to look for explanations."

"Perfect. I know it's silly, and totally not what I came here to do, but every time I get into the research for the flu epidemic at the school, I find myself directed further back. And obviously Clarissa Somersby had some interest in all this, considering the books and things she left behind."

"You don't have to justify yourself to me. I rather think, in my very limited experience, that the best historians are those who can follow their instincts. If you only tread the same paths others have, you'll only ever reach the same conclusions."

"Very poetic," she teased, but it did her good to be confirmed. She had always longed for approval—as much as she disliked that in herself, and as much as she was learning to recognize and follow her own choices, it was still nice to be met with wholehearted support and not critical, cutting questions.

After a few, rather more personal, exchanges, Juliet hung up and finished walking the ground floor. Every door and window down here was securely locked. "Not that it keeps you out," she found herself saying aloud. "Whoever you are."

But whoever you are, I'm not afraid of you. At least, no more afraid than any sudden exposure to the unexpected might make one. She didn't especially want to round a corner and come face to face with the little ghost boy—or the shadowy female that flickered on the edge of her awareness—but she didn't think Havencross or any of its old inhabitants were a threat to her.

She went up the grand front staircase and made her sweep of the second floor, then passed into the medieval section. For the first time since the night of her surprising impression of a woman and newborn baby, she felt something calling to her. It was the sense of something lying in wait, something she half-remembered or dreamed.

Juliet grabbed her bedside flashlight and opened the door leading up to the solar. She commented aloud on her own actions as she climbed, a trick she'd had as a child to keep anxiety under control. "Yes, it's always a good idea to explore a haunted house at night. By yourself. Every movie I've ever seen tells me that this is a perfectly wonderful idea. Maybe there's a surprise party waiting for me up there."

Of course there wasn't a surprise party—there wasn't anything. She'd been up here once a week since her arrival and it was just the same: the light of a single bare bulb and her own flashlight illuminating the bare corners of the space. Empty and echoing and innocent.

She had begun to descend when she heard half-remembered sounds coming loudly and clearly from the windows behind her: the drumming of hooves on packed earth, the creak and murmur of leather saddles, the iron jangle of armed riders.

Men on horseback. The awareness shot through her with the suddenness of a lightning strike, and she dropped the flashlight. It went out when it hit the floor, and she shot back up into the solar. Though she'd already turned off the overhead bulb, it wasn't dark. Light came through the windows as though it were afternoon, not six hours after sunset. It touched and traced and bounced off the outlines of furniture—enormous chests, solid tables—and tapestries along the walls.

Juliet was not possessed. She knew exactly who she was and that something extraordinarily odd was happening, but she was herself as she moved to the windows.

And then, between one step and the next, she was someone else entirely, frantically counting horsemen and searching for the identifying banner—

She'd known what it would be, and yet she'd hoped. For George, maybe, for as detestable as his actions were, he surely held her in fondness, and he was by all reports as changeable a man as he'd been a boy. She'd known him since he was tiny and she could use that, could twist all his mixed-up loyalties against him …

But it was not the royal banner with its three silver bars marking George's distance from his brother's throne.

It was the white bear and ragged staff on a field of red—the banner of the Kingmaker himself, the Earl of Warwick.

She knew, in that moment, there would be no clemency. Warwick dealt only in death.

By the time the terror receded enough for Juliet to remember who and where and when she was, she was back in her bedroom with no memory of having reached there. And although she was afraid, it was not for herself. It was for whatever had happened here that was so terrible it still had the power to frighten after centuries. She lay awake for a long time before her heartbeat returned to normal.

She was woken up before dawn, not by anything supernatural but the simple ding of an incoming text. Followed rapidly by several more.

Duncan. Juliet's stomach dropped as she saw that he had abandoned his attempts to be persuasive and reasonable. Her silence had finally provoked him to rage, and venom dripped through every hateful accusation and furious charge he flung at her now. Never loved me … social climber … frigid bitch … whore …

Dimly, Juliet wondered how Duncan rationalized those opposite adjectives, but his last text pushed all other thoughts from her mind. It was a photograph, taken through an airport terminal window, of a plane pulled up to a jetway.

A British Airways plane.