‘Don’t the flowers look nice.’ David pulled the heavy door closed behind them.
‘We didn’t come to see the flowers.’ She averted her eyes from the window with the white roses. One of them had blown and she could see the petals on the floor, drifting over a grating.
‘Up here.’ He headed towards the chancel steps. ‘Gower said to look under the carpet.’
They stood looking down at the faded Persian runner which lay between the choir stalls. Even in the dim light they could see the richness that had once been there. David crouched and flicked back one corner of the rug. ‘Good Lord. Look. He’s right. There’s a beautiful brass under here.’ He dragged the carpet back revealing the exquisitely elaborate detail of an inlaid brass about six feet long.
‘It’s a woman,’ Joss said after a moment. She grimaced. What else would it be at Belheddon.
‘A beautiful rich woman.’ David stood with his back to the altar so he could see her the right way up. ‘Gower said this was only uncovered in 1965 when they took the floorboards up because of dry rot. The original stone floor had been covered to raise it at some point.’
‘Who is she, do we know?’ Joss joined him with her back to the altar.
‘Margaret de Vere. See.’ He pointed to the ornate lettering: ‘Hic jacet … Margaret … uxor … Robert de Vere … morete in anno domine 1485.’ He glanced at Joss. ‘This is Katherine’s mother!’
Katherine!
She had seen the king’s gaze following the girl around the hall and she had long ago sensed his lust.
‘Husbands can be disposed of, my lord.’ Her eyes narrowed as she smiled. He frowned and shook his head.
The presence of the woman made his flesh crawl. But still his whole body ached to have the girl.
Squatting by the elegant pointed feet of the woman on the floor before them David leaned forward and touched the cold brass with a tentative finger. ‘Margaret de Vere was accused of sorcery and fortune telling, which was their way of saying witchcraft,’ he whispered. ‘It was even rumoured that she had brought about the king of England’s death. The king being Edward IV – the king who came to Belheddon.’
There was a long silence. Joss’s first reaction, incredulous disbelief, wavered. At Belheddon anything was possible.
‘What happened to her? Was she burned or did they hang her?’ Joss stared down at the aquiline features beneath the ornate head-dress.
‘Neither. Nothing was ever proved. She died at home in her bed.’
‘At Belheddon.’
‘At Belheddon.’
They both stared down at the floor.
‘Do you think she was a witch?’ Joss asked at last.
David shook his head thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know. I wondered if we would find a clue. Some kind of symbol on the brass perhaps. You know, the way you can tell whether a crusader reached Jerusalem or not by whether or not his feet are crossed. I’ve always wondered if that is true or not!’
Joss managed a smile. ‘You mean we’re looking for a heraldic broomstick?’
He shook his head. ‘Witchcraft wasn’t so much a cottage industry then. It was a far more aristocratic pastime at this period, don’t forget. The court was riddled with accusations. There were rumours about Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen, and the Duchess of Bedford, her mother, and at least one of his mistresses, Jane Shore – ’
‘Surely a lot of those accusations were part of Richard III’s propaganda against the princes who were Elizabeth’s sons.’ Joss sat down in the front choir stall, still staring down at the brass.
‘But not all. Accusations had been made against Elizabeth Woodville from the start, because no one at court could understand why King Edward married her. There was this young, tall, handsome, romantic king, and he meets this widow, who is a Lancastrian, has two children already, is not even particularly beautiful, in the middle of a forest and within days and against everybody’s advice he’s married her! Perhaps she did bewitch him.’ He smiled. ‘And there lies our problem. No historian worth his solid, scientific salt, would believe it. It must have been something else. Something dynastic.’
‘Or just her beautiful blue eyes?’ Joss smiled.
He scowled. ‘Or was there no smoke without fire? Did these women and others like her – the Duchess of Bedford or Margaret de Vere here, actually find a means of summoning the devil to help them achieve their ends?’
The atmosphere in the church appeared to have dropped several degrees.
Joss shivered. Did he really believe that? ‘You’re talking about Satanism, David, not witchcraft,’ she said at last.
‘Devil worship.’ He glanced at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of these women who believe that witchcraft was some kind of goody goody, never hurt a fly, paganism which does no harm to anyone and is the feminist answer to the patriarchal, misogynist church!’
Joss smiled. ‘Something like that, perhaps.’ She found herself staring into the shadowy nave. ‘But not in this case. Here, I think you may be right.’
Almost unwillingly she looked down at the brass at her feet, picking out one by one the details from the ornate curlicues of the surround. Were there hidden symbols there, clues she could not see or recognise?
‘You believe that she,’ she gestured at the floor, ‘conjured the devil here, at Belheddon.’
‘I think maybe she did something rather strange. Enough to make people suspicious. I’ve a few more sources to look up before I try and formulate a theory.’
‘I think it will be very hard to find proof, David.’ Joss gave him a tolerant grin. ‘We’re dealing with a field here which is not amenable to the kind of reductionist study you are used to.’