It had been a most fortuitous acquaintance.
Mr. Groby was blind in one eye, half-crippled and had a terrible wet cough that seemed to weaken him when it came on, but the man knew the history of England, and the history of the Battle of Hastings, like nobody’s business. He and Abigail spoke weekly and she’d been making the trek down to Battle nearly every weekend to listen to his tales and speak with the curators of the museum. They had artifacts and documentation in their archives that she’d been given access to, thanks to Mr. Groby, and she was very grateful for it, but it seemed like all of that history wasn’t telling her much about what she really wanted to know. For Abigail, she was looking for something very specific.
The unsung heroes of the Norman Invasion and their impact upon the Conquest.
That was the tentative title of her dissertation. She’d refine it at some point, but right now, that was pretty much the entire focus of her paper – the men other than the Duke of Normandy who had made a difference in the conquest of England. The curators at the museum had been very helpful with suggestions on where else she could find additional material that might tell her of the driving forces behind the Duke of Normandy’s army, but the truth was that there was very little documentation about that subject in general. There wasn’t a great deal known from period sources about the actual Battle of Hastings and the ensuing conquest.
Nearly a year into the first of three years for her Ph.D. studies, Abigail was starting to become discouraged with just how very little information there was about a subject she was certain held great and deep secrets – the front lines of the Duke of Normandy’s army, the knights who would have led the cavalry and would have broken through the English army’s mighty shield wall, a shield wall that had held for nearly nine hours on that fateful day. But someone had eventually broken through.
Abigail wanted to know who that was.
Now, she had what she thought might be a breakthrough in finding out. Mr. Groby had a friend, it seemed, whose family had been original land owners in the area in the High Middle Ages. This family was very old and the very last of the line, an old man by the name of Queensborough Browne, lived like a hermit off of Powdermill Road, which was in sight of the battlefield and the demolished abbey. Mr. Groby had made an appointment on this day to go and see him but it seemed that Queensborough was nowhere to be found.
Now, they were wandering in the guy’s house like a couple of burglars, hunting him down as Mr. Groby continued to bang his cane on the floor and call his friend’s name.
“Queenie!”
“Mr. Groby, maybe he’s just not here,” Abigail said, trying to insist because, even though she was awestruck by the old house, it didn’t seem right prowling through it without an invitation. “I can always come back. I’ll be back next weekend.”
“Nonsense,” Groby said. “He is here, somewhere. He’s expecting us, I assure you.”
Abigail wasn’t so sure. They had made their way through the foyer, into what appeared to be a back hall that was cluttered to the roof with all kinds of things, and now they were entering an extremely old kitchen. The floor was stone and the stove in what had been the old hearth had to be a hundred years old. They hadn’t made stoves like that for decades, if not centuries. The old sink was iron and the very old spigots were also made of iron, or so it seemed. Truthfully, it was difficult to tell. As they passed through the kitchen and towards what looked like an orangery beyond, an old man suddenly appeared with plants in his hands.
“Queenie!” Groby exclaimed. “Didn’t you hear me calling you, old man?”
Queensborough Browne looked rather surprised to see his friend, immediately spying the young woman behind him. A stub of a man with a crown of white hair that looked like cotton and enormous hands now dirty from potting, his old eyes inspected the young woman for a moment before replying.
“Is that the girl?” he asked.
Groby nodded, turning to look at Abigail rather proudly. “An American convert,” he said. “She’s coming back over to this side of the pond. A very intelligent young lady, actually. This is Miss Abigail Devlin. Miss Devlin, this is my friend, Mr. Queensborough Browne.”
Queensborough’s gaze lingered on Abigail for a moment before turning to set the plants down on the potting table behind him. In fact, the entire room with glass walls and ceiling, called a sunroom in America but in England it had a variety of names, like garden room or The Orangery, was full of plants in various stages of growth. Plastic pots littered the table along with gorgeous mums and foxgloves. Queensborough brushed off his dirty hands as he returned his attention to his guests.
“Come on, then,” he said, sounding annoyed that he’d been interrupted. “It’s all in the dining room.”
That was as much of a greeting as the old hermit could muster. Abigail looked anxiously at Groby, who simply shrugged and followed Queensborough as he headed towards the front of the house.
“Queenie, when is the last time you left this place?” Groby asked, trying to strike up a cheerful conversation. “I’ve not seen you over at The 1066 in over a month.”
Abigail knew that The 1066 was a bar over on High Street, an older place without televisions or games to entice the younger crowd. It was an old establishment for older people who just wanted a pint without all of the noise and hype of today’s bars. She was trying to peer around Groby to see how Queensborough was reacting to the question, but the man with the cotton hair didn’t give much reaction. He seemed singularly focused on what was in his dining room.
“No time,” he told Groby. As they entered the dining room with the dark blue walls of peeling paint, dark wood, and a fireplace that was as tall as Abigail was, he waved his guests in with impatience. “Come, come. Sit down so we can get on with it.”
Abigail was coming to think he wasn’t the hospitable type but Groby didn’t seem to be bothered by it. He sat down in a very old chair with a faded red velvet cushion as Queensborough organized a vast array of items already on the table – papers, things that looked like booklets, and an old box that was fairly nondescript except for the fact that it was ancient like the rest of the house and reinforced with iron strips.
In fact, Abigail was quite interested in that box. She summoned her courage to speak as Queensborough fumbled with the latch on it.
“Thank you so much for agreeing to see us today,” she said politely. “Your home is just exquisite. Mr. Groby said that your family has lived here since Medieval times.”