‘If that’s what it is, it’s a very ancient burial,’ said Nicholas gently. ‘I don’t think the police will be interested in something so old. Because it is very old, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It went in the same day as the staircase was put up,’ said Johnny Bell firmly. ‘The only way you could get it in with this construction.’
‘So we have a date, then,’ said Nicholas. ‘Diana will know. My wife, Diana. She’s somewhere about…’
‘Sixteen sixty-two. That’s the year it was put in.’ A low clear voice called down to us from the upper floor. Diana came to join us, taking in the strange scene at a glance. ‘Oh dear! How extraordinary! But how fascinating! Look, with the stairs in their present parlous state I think we should take whatever that is downstairs and put it on the big table in the yellow drawing room and decide what to do about it when we’re in no danger of disappearing through a hole. Eleanor, is it? Eleanor Hardwick? I’m Diana Wemyss. I was just making you a cup of tea. Perhaps that can wait for a few minutes?’
I smiled as Diana’s comforting presence chased away the chill foreboding. She couldn’t have been more different from her gaunt husband. Short and rounded, with merry brown eyes, she had the cheerful and confident charm of a robin. We all made our way back down the stairs and into the drawing room and gathered around the little box waiting for Diana to tell us what to do next.
‘We really have to open it,’ she said. ‘Too embarrassing if we hauled a busy constable all the way out from Norwich to witness us opening an empty container.’
Everyone nodded, and Johnny got to work again with his chisel. Hardly breathing, we all peered into the coffin as the lid rose.
‘Ah,’ said Diana in an unsteady voice. ‘Nicholas, perhaps you’d better inform the constabulary? Just to be on the safe side.’
Two hours later, an inspector had called and viewed the pathetic contents of the box, and had taken brief statements. He agreed that the burial had been clandestine and there’d probably been dirty work at the crossroads back in the seventeenth century but, really, this was one for Time Team, not the Norfolk constabulary He was quite happy to leave it, as he put it, ‘in the hands of the experts’. That was us. We were on our own.
On a scatter of almost-fresh sawdust in the bottom of the box lay the yellowed bones of a very small infant. It lay on its side in a foetal position and, as far as our appalled and fleeting glances could determine, there was no obvious cause of death. There was no tattered winding sheet, no identifying bracelet. The only other thing the box contained was a slip of parchment. It had been glued inside the lid and so remained unaffected by the decay within the box. On it a neat hand had written, ‘Deus tute eum spectas.’
‘Good heavens!’ said Diana. ‘What have we here? The lost heir of the Easton family?’
I remember even then, in the turmoil of mixed emotions I was feeling, that something was off-key. I felt sick and guilty that we had, however innocently, displaced and disturbed the little body after all those years. With uncomfortable sideways glances at each other, we had replaced the lid on the coffin, Johnny Bell solemnly making the sign of the cross before packing up his tools and leaving.
Gratefully I accepted Diana’s invitation, in view of the late hour and the filthy weather, to stay the night in one of the guest rooms. While she put together a supper in their small flat on the second floor, Nicholas invited me to come round the house with him as he ‘put it to bed’. I watched him set alarms and lock doors, the whole process taking about half an hour. As we wandered down through the dark house, our progress was much delayed by Nicholas’s discursions as we passed one beautiful thing after another.
Pausing finally in the gallery which encircled the staircase at first-floor level, he drew my attention to a run of portraits. ‘I’d like to haul this lot in for interrogation, Ellie,’ he said. ‘I bet one of them could tell us more about the contents of that box. The Easton family. They were all here the year the staircase was put in. They came up from their London home for the jollifications in sixteen sixty-two. The celebrations covered the restoration of the monarchy two years earlier, but also the marriage of the younger brother of the earl.’
He lifted the shade of a table lamp and held it upwards. ‘Here he is, with his wife alongside. This is the chap whose anniversary we’re celebrating this Christmas. Father of the dynasty. His descendants still live hereabouts – they gave the house to the Trust thirty years ago. Robert Easton. Took over when his elder brother died childless in sixteen seventy-two.’
I looked up at the handsome florid features of Robert Easton, Earl of Somersham. An impressive man in a shoulder-length curling brown wig, he wore a coat of dark-blue velvet with gold frogging over a ruched shirt of finest white linen, a lace jabot at his throat. The painter had conveyed his subject’s confidence and pride by the seemingly casual placing of one elegant hand on his hip.
Nicholas for a moment dipped the lamp to illuminate the left-hand corner of the painting. I was impressed but not surprised to read: ‘P Lely pinxit’.
‘A Peter Lely!’
Nicholas smiled. ‘Yes, the Dutchman who painted all those sumptuous portraits of Charles Stuart’s mistresses. The Windsor beauties. All white bosoms, floating draperies, and slanting invitation in their sloe-black eyes. Hmmm…’
We looked together at the lady in this painting. She was young and fair and quite lovely, but here were no sloping shoulders, no flirtatious glance at the artist. Her gown was of chestnut silk, draped and shimmering, and the luscious autumnal colouring was all that you could have hoped for from Lely but worn with an unusual modesty, her only jewellery a simple pearl necklace. In her lap rested a basket overflowing with autumn fruits and flowers – a cornucopia. In the background leaves drifted down from stately parkland trees.
‘Mary, Countess of Somersham. As she became on her husband’s accession to the title. We assume this was a wedding portrait – it was certainly done in the year of their marriage when Robert was the younger brother-in-waiting. Not much of a catch for a girl, you might think, but he was – for her. She was no aristocrat. Mary was the daughter of a Quaker shipbuilder, but very rich, so they both got what they wanted from the marriage. An unusual match, but it turned out well.’
‘And the cornucopia is a pointed reference to the wealth she was bringing to the Easton family?’
‘That’s right. After the lean years of the Commonwealth it was a miracle they had survived as a family at all, and they were certainly pleased to have her injection of cash. Bet if the truth were known she even paid for the staircase! She saved the whole dynasty. She was fruitful in other ways, too,’ he added, showing me a further picture.
A charming portrait showed seven children gambolling in a landscape which was clearly Felthorpe Hall. Formally dressed miniatures of adults, they played with toys and small spaniels or clustered at the feet of their mother, an older and now matronly Mary. All here was sunshine striking satin, rounded pink cheeks, and laughing eyes. An idyllic scene. A perfect family I said as much to Nicholas.
He grunted. ‘Unfortunately, not perfect. These little poppets had the most appalling uncle. They only inherited because William, Robert’s older brother, died an early death. A lethal combination of drink and the pox, it’s said. He died abroad and spent very little time here at Felthorpe, which was held together by the efforts of Robert and his trusty steward.’