Amy Myers was once a director of a London publishing company. When she gave up that “day job” to write fiction, she produced her highly acclaimed series about Victorian chef Auguste Didier. She has other series and stand-alone books to her credit, too, including The Wickenham Murders (Severn House ’04), which introduces new characters and, she hints, may be the first in a series.
Perhaps it was merely a foolish whim to walk the last mile or two to Canterbury. The idea of driving into the city on the path along which so many pilgrims had passed before him didn’t seem right. He wanted to reflect, not to fight twenty-first-century traffic. He was over eighty now, but this was his penance, and his own two legs must carry him to it.
Here at the bend of the eastern edge of Harbledown Hill, pilgrims had caught their first glimpse of Canterbury Cathedral, its steeple crowned with a gilt angel. Here they would dismount and fall on their knees to give thanks, for within that cathedral lay their destination, the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket.
Murder and religion, he reflected. The passions aroused by both had been linked in the day of Archbishop Thomas as they had been ever since. In the year 1170 it had taken four knights to strike down Thomas a Becket within his own cathedral, and for the rest of their lives, so legend said, they had wandered the world in penance and misery after their terrible crime.
A night in Canterbury in World War II had changed his life, too. He had been a young man in his early twenties when the murders were committed. He, unlike the other two, had lived on. Perhaps that in itself required a penance at the Martyrdom or the site behind the cathedral altar where Becket’s magnificent shrine had once rested. Then Thomas Cromwell had boasted that he would make Henry VIII the richest king of England there had ever been. The Pope’s supremacy had been renounced, and Cromwell’s men destroyed and looted even this most sacrosanct of memorials.
Before that time, the pilgrims would advance up the steps from the Martyrdom to the Trinity Chapel, first to see the golden likeness of the saint’s head, and then to the shrine itself, guarded by iron railings through which only the sick were allowed to enter. The shrine would be invisible as they approached; it was concealed by a wooden canopy suspended from the roof by ropes. At the given moment, the canopy was drawn up, and the shrine itself blazed forth with all its glittering jewels and gold decoration. The largest jewel had been the Regale of France, given by King Louis VII. It was a huge carbuncle, a ruby said to be as large as a hen’s egg, which glowed fiery red as the light caught it.
For sixty years the man had forced himself not to think about the night of Sunday, 31 May, 1942, but now he must do so. It had been sheer greed that brought murder to Canterbury. Did the whole story matter now that the jewel was gone forever? Yes.
As the music of the great organ of Canterbury Cathedral soared around him, Lieutenant Robert Wayncroft wrestled with his conscience. On Friday, after his grandfather’s funeral, the solicitors had given him the sealed envelope he had expected. His grandfather had been his sole close family relation, and so Robert had been permitted a brief compassionate leave to sort out his affairs. He had inherited the house on Lady Wootton’s Green, and Chillingham Place, the Tudor ancestral home near Chilham, now in a sorry state of repair and requisitioned by the army. It was the letter that concerned him most, however, for it contained the details of the closely guarded secret that had been handed on from generation to generation of Wayncrofts: the whereabouts of the Regale of France.
“The blessing of God almighty...” The service was ending, but Robert remained in the cathedral, thinking about what he should do. With Canterbury under constant threat of air raids, the jewel could hardly be safe where it was. Only ill health had prevented his grandfather from moving it, as had happened before when the jewel seemed in danger — not least when Napoleon looked set to invade Kent. That much was clear. What was less clear was what should happen to it after he had found it. Try as he might, the insidious thought of the money that the huge ruby would fetch crept into his mind and refused to leave. He could do so much with it when the war was over. He could even rebuild Chillingham Place; alternatively he could, his conscience told him, give the money to the church. Then he battled with more personal ways of spending the money. What was the point of the jewel being hidden away when if he sold it to a museum it might be displayed for all to see?
“Only to ensure the safety of the jewel is your duty, Robert, not its future,” his grandfather had made clear in his letter.
Yet this was wartime, Robert argued with God, and there was no sign of the war’s ending. The time for old legends was past, this was the twentieth century, and the old faith would never again be restored to Canterbury Cathedral.
He stood up. It was time to leave. He would go to where the jewel lay hidden and take it to safety. That was the first priority.
He glanced around him as he moved out into the aisle, aware of the increased tension in the city streets even though it was still light. Most people would be at home, fearful of air raids in retaliation for last night’s RAF bombing raid on Cologne. What better cathedral to aim for than Canterbury? Since April, German policy had been to strike at the historic cities of England: so far, Exeter, Bath, Norwich, and York. A target as tempting as Canterbury could not be long delayed, and the sooner he fulfilled his mission the better.
Something made him stop. Would he, even now, be followed by someone watching in the dark recesses of the cathedral? He decided to make his way through the cathedral precincts to the Broad Street exit, and he slipped out of a side door and down the steps to the remains of the old monastery. It was silent here, and, despite the daylight, gloomy as he entered the so-called Dark Entry. He paused to listen for any footstep following him, and as he did so he remembered his grandfather telling him that there had been gruesome stories about the Dark Entry passageway even back as far as Henry VIII’s reign.
“It was here, Robert, that your ancestor Sir Geoffrey Wayncroft met his death in trying to prevent the theft of the Regale by Cromwell’s men.”
As a child, Robert had been terrified by the place, imagining that any Wayncroft who walked here might meet a similar fate.
He pulled himself together. He was a soldier, trained to kill if necessary. What if someone were following him, someone who remembered his foolish talk on the beaches of Dunkirk two years earlier? The nightmare came back. He had been sitting with two other soldiers, but not from his battalion. They were in the lightly wounded category, waiting, it seemed endlessly, for ships that might with luck return them home across the Channel to England. With the Luftwaffe screaming overhead, minutes ticked by like hours. Family secrets hadn’t seemed so important then; lack of food, sleep, and the need to communicate with someone, anyone, made him loose-tongued.
“Ever heard of the Regale jewel? It was a huge carbuncle,” he heard himself saying.
“That’s what you get on your bum, ain’t it?” the private sniggered.
Robert had been furious and it made his tongue the looser. “It was a ruby as huge as an egg. It hasn’t been seen since the sixteenth century — and I’ll tell you why. When my grandfather dies, I’ll be the heir and know the secret of the hiding place. The Wayncrofts have been guarding it as a sacred duty until the Pope returns to Canterbury.”
“May that be soon, mon ami,” said the French lieutenant.
Robert had been too engrossed in the need to bolster his own importance. Now he glanced at the other two men, and saw naked greed on their faces: the Cockney and the Frenchman, Private Johnnie Wilson and Lieutenant Christophe Bonneur.