‘And the king.’ Joss met her eye. ‘What about the king?’
‘I think you’ll find he’s already gone, Joss. You were very special to him, remember.’ She smiled. She would never, Joss knew, reveal what they had talked about with Edward of England, the sun of York, who, had he been a man, would have fathered Joss’s unborn child and who might have been her father, and her mother’s father, and her grandmother’s father before that, and who was, with Katherine de Vere, her ancestor by blood and true descent.
‘I wish the moon was out.’ Joss looked down into the blackness of the hole.
‘It will be, look.’ Janet had been the only one looking up at the sky. Behind the mist the full moon was a wraith high up above the wrack. As they watched it found a gap in the drifting cloud and for a moment shone down into the garden.
David and Luke between them lowered the box into the ground and Joss and then Natalie each threw down a handful of soil. For a minute they waited as the moonlight ran light fingers over the carved wood then as the mist returned like a veil across the garden David lifted the spade. As the first shovel full of earth poured down into the grave they all saw the spray of white roses as the darkness returned.
It was my Lady Katherine
Muffled in the mist the voice seemed to drift across the lake.
It was my Lady Katherine
It was my Lady Katherine
Each time the voice was further away.
They looked at each other.
‘I shall miss them.’ Joss smiled.
Natalie shook her head. ‘Rascals,’ she said. ‘Let them join their mum. The only children at Belheddon should be real children.’
‘It’s done, Joss.’ David had patted down the last of the earth with the back of the spade. ‘Are you going to put something here to mark it?’
Joss shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘I just can’t believe that it’s really over. That there’s no more danger.’
‘There’s no more danger,’ Natalie said firmly. She took Joss’s cold hand. ‘Come on. It’s time to go in. Leave Katherine to her moonlight.’
Slowly they made their way back across the grass. On the terrace Joss stopped and looked back. The garden was silent.
The echoes were gone.
Daily Telegraph 17th July 1995
To Luke and Jocelyn Grant a daughter (Alice Laura
Katherine) a sister for Tom and Ned.
Sunday Times
September 1995
Son of the Sword by Jocelyn Grant (Hibberds) An accomplished first novel written with wit and pace. Set largely in the author’s own house during the years of the Wars of the Roses, Richard Mortimer and Ann de Vere tread a heady tightrope of romance, adventure and near disaster which culminates in an extraordinarily satisfactory ending, leaving the reader clinging to the edge of his chair. Highly recommended. I shall look forward to seeing more from this author.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Belheddon does not exist. Nor did this branch of the de Vere family. King Edward IV had many mistresses during his lifetime. The names of the last two are unknown; the story of Katherine de Vere, woven through this tale, is entirely fictional. Accusations of witchcraft and sorcery were made at Edward’s court both against his queen and other high-born women around him, but whether these were merely political propaganda or substantiated in truth is for the reader to decide for him or herself.
As always so many people have provided me with help and information in the research of this book. I should particularly like to thank James Maitland of Lay & Wheeler in Colchester for his suggestions on the contents of the Belheddon cellar, (any spelling mistakes in the wine names are my fault entirely) Janet Hanlon for her assistance and Carole Blake for her attempts at keeping my characters’ drinking habits within bounds! Also Rachel Hore for her editorial advice during what must have been the hottest days in East Anglia since the reign of Edward IV! I should also like to thank my son Adrian for his help with research and Peter Shepherd, Dr Robert Brownell and my son Jonathan for their help in sorting out my computer crash, computer crises and computer panic! I think I prefer to use a quill pen!
A lost child in the Welsh borders;
a violent attack in London;
an epic battle between the Celts and the Romans.
What can possibly link them?
Read on for an extract from
BARBARA ERSKINE’S
thrilling new novel,
The Warrior’s Princess
The gods were with her. She managed to get a flight that same evening. Leaving most of her belongings locked in the car in the long-term car park at Heathrow, she settled into her seat with a huge sigh of relief as the plane took off and angled sharply over London.
She arrived at last at the palazzo in the early hours of the morning. When she climbed out of the taxi, paid the driver and dragged her case to the door the street was, she noticed wearily, as busy as it would be at midday at home. She had no time for any other observations. In seconds she was being enveloped in hugs and escorted up the great marble staircase which led to Kim’s front door on the first floor. Minutes after that she was seated in front of a crisp glass of Frascati and a bowl of pasta in the echoing old-fashioned kitchen.
‘So?’ Steph sat down opposite her and leaned forward on her elbows. ‘What happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ Jess took a mouthful of the fettuccine alla marinara, savouring the flavours with delight. She had not eaten since her motorway stop, so long ago it seemed like another era. A warm fuzzy sense of security was beginning to drift over her.