Blood Ties Read Free Page A

within it, surging out as if from a bottle long corked and suddenly opened, revealing its taint. He gagged, a sleeve raised instinctively to his face. His legs froze, the weak knee locked.
    ‘Still ripe?’
    He had not heard Tucknell approach and he started at the voice.
    ‘How can that be?’ His own voice was harsh, choked. ‘Has she not lain in this ground for nearly twenty years? Is it true then, all they said of her, that she would defy death?’
    The warder, giving no reply, stepped past Thomas and down into the grave. Unwilling to look, unable to look away, Thomas saw what could only be the palm of a hand, bones exposed beneath rotting flesh, beneath a frantic wriggling mass, maggots squirming in unaccustomed light. The smell seemed to hit him again with double the force, yet he could not avert his eyes, despite the sweat bursting from his forehead, his body close to revolt.
    Tucknell reached into the moving centre of the horror. ‘Poor lady,’ he murmured. Tenderly, he tucked the hand back into the splintered side of the coffin, then looked up. ‘She is not the one you seek. She has lain here just a year.’ Turning to the men he ordered, ‘Dig deeper, this side. And dig more carefully.’
    When the warder was once more beside him, Thomas, mastering his voice, said, ‘Who was it?’
    ‘Jane Grey. A simple maid, scarce seventeen. Another victim of another man’s ambition.’ The voice grew harsh as he gestured at the ground. ‘Do you know how many headless queens jostle for precedence down there? Three. Her, whose reign was nine scant days, whose rest we have just violated. Within two arms’ span lies another, Catherine Howard, a foolish, vain, girl who yet did not deserve this fate. And before them both, the first to find this false rest, the only one who deserved the title of Queen …’ He faltered, his anger no longer sustaining him. ‘Well, her you shall see soon enough.’
    Thomas had not yet cleared the taste of bile from his mouth when the shovel’s note changed for the second time. On Tucknell’s command, the men proceeded carefully, slowly clearing the earth, till a small, squarish casket was revealed, no deeper than the man’s leg beside it, barely as long. Tucknell returned Thomas’s querying look.
    ‘An arrow case. That was the best that was around to bury her in.’ He handed Thomas a short iron bar, flattened at one end. ‘We shall withdraw, sir, as you ordered. Call us when you are done.’ He looked as if he would say something more, then turned sharply away, herding the labourers outside, all soon swallowed by the mists at the door. All sound went with them and Thomas was alone, in a pool of flickering light, in the loneliness of a grave.
    He thought to call out, to bring someone back, the excuse of needing a lamp held. But his orders were clear. No one was to know his true mission. Most would think he was there to put an end to the rumours that her body had been spirited away, that she’d been reburied in her native Norfolk where, it was said, a white hare made a midnight run across the fields from the churchyard on each anniversary of her death. They could believe what they wanted. No one would ever guess the truth. For he was not there to verify what was within the grave. He was there to verify what was not.
    He could delay no more. Placing two lamps on the edge of the rough hole, he stiffly descended into it. He expected a struggle, but when the flat end of the bar was inserted under the lid, it gave easily, as if it had been barely nailed down. Two more positions, each with slight pressure, and the lid lifted. His fingers poised in the cracks, he uttered a swift ‘ Ave ’, then began to breathe slowly, evenly, bringing calm into his body, his mind, as he had been taught. He had done some distasteful things in his recent life. But they had all been to the service of God, in obedience to his superiors, the interpreters of God’s will. This task, however unpleasant, was just