Nicola Cornick - The Phantom Tree

Mary Seymour .

Alison’s breath stopped. There was a tight pain in her chest and a buzzing in her ears. Mary. After all this time.

She had never given up hope. It wasn’t in her nature to despair although she had come very close to it so many times. All the history books—those that mentioned Mary Seymour at all—said that she had died as a child. Alison had known that was not true but she had never discovered what had happened to Mary after she had left Wolf Hall.

‘ Help me, ’ she had said to Mary all those years ago . ‘ Help me to find my son. I’ll come back for him. Leave me word… ’

She had not begged, precisely; her relationship with Mary had been too prickly to allow her to show that vulnerability. She had phrased it as an order, but Mary had known. There had been a bargain between them. She had helped Mary escape Wolf Hall and, in return, Mary had promised to help her.

Mary was the key to finding Arthur. She always had been and so Alison had held tenaciously to the belief that one day she would see Mary again.

And now she had.

Suddenly she felt faint with shock, trembling, tears pricking her eyes.

‘Are you all right?’ Someone was addressing her, a woman with a plastic rain hat and an anxious expression. She spoke in the tones of someone who feels obliged to offer help but sincerely hopes it isn’t going to be needed. Alison forced a smile.

‘I’m fine, thanks. I tripped over the edge of the pavement and winded myself for a moment.’

The woman’s sharp gaze scanned her face.

She thinks I’m drunk , Alison thought. She took a deep breath and pinned the smile on tighter. ‘No harm done,’ she said. ‘Thanks for stopping to check.’

‘Well, if you’re sure… The woman was already moving away, duty done.

Alison found that her hand was resting against the windowpane as though reaching out to touch the portrait within. She let it fall to her side and straightened up, pushing open the door and stepping from the dark street into the bright interior of the gallery. For a moment the harsh light dazzled her. Out of it came the figure of a man, summoned by the bell on the door. He was elderly, greying, with a stoop and leather elbow patches on his tweed jacket, but his eyes were bright, vivid blue, and he seemed to crackle with life and energy. Alison felt it at once, that force of personality that some people seemed to project effortlessly, lighting up everything around them.

‘Can I help you?’ He sounded surprised that anyone should have dropped in on a wet December evening.

‘That portrait of a lady,’ Alison said. ‘The Tudor one…’

‘Beautiful, isn’t it,’ the man said.

Alison was taken aback. Had Mary been beautiful? Perhaps she had, although Alison had never thought so. She was the one whom men had admired. She had been curves to Mary’s angles, rose to her sallow. She looked at the portrait again, trying to be dispassionate and to ignore the stirrings of old jealousy. She had never liked Mary. In the beginning she had hated her with a child’s simple hatred. That had grown into a more complicated set of emotions as she grew up, but they had never been friends. They had been too different and too far apart.

The woman in the picture had features that were neat rather than beautiful: a long nose but delicate and not disproportionately so, arched brows above eyes of an indeterminate dark colour, a slight smile on the pursed pink lips. There was only the faintest hint of the hair colour beneath her Tudor gable hood though Alison knew it to be red brown, like her mother’s. Mary’s gown was of sumptuous gold and green velvet embroidered with pearls. She looked to be a woman of substance. There were pearls too on the hood and a space where one was missing. That was typical of Mary. She would not have noticed.

She realised that the man was waiting patiently for the question she had not yet articulated.

‘It’s lovely,’ she agreed. ‘The artist must have been very talented.’

She saw him smile and realised that she had not quite been able to repress the spite. Mary, grown up, or at least on the cusp of womanhood, made her as jealous as Mary the child had once done.

She sighed. None of that mattered. What was important was that Mary had survived. Thrived, in fact, by the look of it. And that was good because Mary was the key. Mary had promised to leave word of Arthur for her, and Mary never broke her promises.

Alison felt it again then, the dizziness that was a mixture of hope and terror. She could not let herself believe that this time she would find Arthur. The crash of despair that had followed each time she had failed had been almost too much to bear.

‘... unidentified.’ She realised that the man had been speaking all the time that she had been lost in the turbulence of her thoughts.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Did you say that the artist has not been identified or the sitter has not been identified?’

Now he was looking at her with concern. She caught a glance of herself in the mirrored wall behind the sales desk, all wet rat’s tails hair and pallid complexion. No wonder he was fidgeting with the display in front of him, fussily moving an ugly ceramic vase two inches to the left whilst he waited for her to take herself off. She could hardly fit the profile of a potential customer.

‘The artist is unknown,’ he repeated patiently. ‘The sitter is Anne Boleyn.’

‘No,’ Alison said. She cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, but that isn’t Anne Boleyn. It’s Mary Seymour.’

‘It is Anne Boleyn.’ The man was still smiling in a rather determined fashion. He was charming. She didn’t deserve such tolerance. ‘Tudor portraits aren’t my forte,’ he said, ‘but I do know that this is a newly discovered portrait of Anne, authenticated only recently.’ He pointed to the background of the painting. It was dark and the shapes drawn there were difficult to decipher. ‘Can you see the box?’ he asked. ‘It has her initials on it.’ Then, as Alison frowned, leaning forward to peer into the depths of the picture: ‘AB. For Anne Boleyn.’

The box. Her box .

Alison could see it, now that he had pointed it out. It sat on a ledge to the right of Mary’s head, only the very faintest sheen on its patina showing in the dark background. It would have been easy to miss, this clue, this promise.

‘ See, Alison, I did not forget you. I have your workbox here, safe for you. ’

She looked back at Mary’s painted face, at the slight sideways glance that led the viewer’s gaze to the wooden box and the bold initials. It had been made of walnut, she remembered, worn smooth over the years by the touch of her fingers. She had loved that box, storing any number of inconsequential items in it: her thimble, a length of ribbon, and a scrap of lace. She might have kept Edward’s love notes in it had he written her any, but he had not.

‘My godson could tell you more about it,’ the man said. ‘He was the one who discovered the portrait. He’s written a book about it. He’s speaking at the festival tomorrow night.’

‘Festival?’ Alison said. She tried to get a grip. She felt strange, jittery. Although the shop was almost aggressively modern she felt closer to the past than she had done in years, disorientated and confused.

‘There’s a literary festival running all week,’ the man said. ‘Adam—my godson—is talking about the painting and about the Tudor court.’ He nodded towards Mary, serene under the dazzling lights. ‘It’s all very exciting. Apparently, there aren’t many portraits of Anne Boleyn.’

‘And this isn’t one of them, I’m afraid,’ Alison said. Rain was seeping down her neck, making her shiver. Or perhaps the shivers were coming from elsewhere, somewhere far deeper inside.