Chapter 6
The skeleton has been moved into the Castle and the skull is back in place. Amazingly they have found the last few small missing bones, a rib and some finger joints. Francis rearranges the bones for the last time. He has abandoned his usual practice of laying the arms along the sides of the skeleton, now they are arranged with the hands folded across the chest, as if in repose, or in prayer.
It is hot in the room and as he finishes moving the bones he senses movement from the man on the table in front of him. He can picture a body wrapping itself around the bones, a man inhabiting the body. It feels as if the rib cage is moving, as if the body is breathing, breathing in time with his own breath. The right leg twitches, as if in pain; the same residual pain that he can feel in his own leg. He stands back, looking intently at the man in front of him.
The next day they decide to close the dig. There doesn’t appear to be anything else in the area the skeleton was found in, and the Castle are keen to carry on with the construction work. Felicity wants to talk about how to stage an exhibition. They will use one of the public rooms, but some thought needs to be given to how much space they want to use and how to deal with the display.
And Francis has had an email from Rebecca in Canterbury to update him as to progress with the skull. She has sent a preliminary sketch but it doesn’t show any detailed features, and she says it will be ready in a couple of days. She has also managed to extract some DNA from the bone, and will have a look at it.
Francis and Simon are starting to clear up when Felicity calls.
‘Where are you?’
‘In the Chapel, just clearing out my things. We’ll be done tonight, but will come back when the reconstruction of the skull is finished.’
‘Can you come over to the Castle? I’ve found something that might interest you.’
‘Sure, I’ll come over now.’
‘I’ll meet you at the entrance. There are a couple of tours coming in, just come to the front of the queue, I’ll be waiting.’
She takes him through the hall and up the grand staircase to one of the galleries on the first floor. There are old portraits along the walls, mainly single faces, and a few of family groups. All old and dusty, historic figures, all dark behind brown varnish in heavy gilt frames; and all in need of restoration. Towards one end she has moved a small table close to the wall and on it is a laptop with a picture of the candlestick in 3D. Above the table on the wall is an altar scene. The altar is familiar, Francis realises that it is the same as the one in his vision of the chapel. It is on one side of the painting, and opposite is the main figure of the portrait, a young handsome man with a sparse beard in his late 20s in splendid Tudor dress, with fur and gilt lining, turned in three quarter profile towards the artist. There is a priest behind the altar holding a communion cup with two hands, and a couple of other figures in the background. Prominent on the altar in the front of the painting is a candlestick. The surface of the canvas has darkened over the years and the details are indistinct, but the comparison with the image on the laptop is striking.
‘Who is it?’ Francis leans forward to read the small note on the wall next to the picture.
‘George Boleyn – brother of Anne Boleyn,’ he reads. ‘Around 1530.’
‘At least that is what we think,’ says Felicity. ‘It looks like other portraits of him and the records we have suggest that from at least the end of the 19th century it has been claimed to be a portrait of Boleyn. We haven’t done any recent work on it, but it was looked at in the 1950s and they thought it was contemporary. We don’t really know. And we have no idea who the artist was. But Hever is not far from here, and there is known to have been a connection with the Boleyn family.’ She steps forward and looks at the painting more closely. ‘We think the background may be of our chapel here, although of course the portrait may not have been posed there and it may have been painted after the main figures. And I think there is a good chance that the candlestick is the one you found. The details as far as you can see them match exactly.’
She pauses and looks at the other figures in the picture. She reaches her hand towards the figure of the priest on the side as if to touch it, but stops and stands back, and then chuckles and turns to Francis. ‘And the priest, now I look at him, he looks just like you.’
Francis frowns and looks at the figure. He shrugs. ‘I guess he does a bit. We get around.’
‘Anyway, we’ll definitely make the picture part of the exhibition, need to clean it up a bit, but it’ll be perfect – the Boleyn connection, the candlestick. Maybe this is your man. We don’t have any specific stories of religious persecution at the castle that we know of, but there was lots of politics going on at the time. If the man died in the 1550s that would have been at the time of Mary – lots of Protestants were killed at the time, lots of clergy. Who knows. It adds colour to the story. It’ll be good when we can see the reconstruction of the head – that’ll be a key part of the display.’
‘Do you know whether the family here then were Catholics or Protestants?’
‘Yes, we think the family that owned the Castle may have been Protestants. As far as we know they weren’t outspoken on either side, probably blew with the wind, many families did. But some of the later writings found at the Castle suggest that the family had been supporters of Elizabeth. But in any case, persecution went both ways. I doubt if we can date the bones specifically enough for it to matter. By 1560 Elizabeth was on the throne and Catholics were being persecuted. Not on the same scale, but locally there were lynchings. We just don’t know.’
Francis was looking closely at the picture, hoping that something would reveal itself, but it was giving up no further clues. He started speaking, looking all the time at the chaplain in the picture. ‘I have been feeling all along that the skeleton is has been trying to tell me something. I know it sounds strange, but we have disturbed his bones after nearly 500 years. We know he had a violent death; probably murdered.’ He paused, as if reluctant to go on. ‘I have had a couple of flashbacks.’
‘What do you mean?’
He was still looking at the chaplain in the picture. ‘Like waking dreams. Imagining what might have been his torture, his death. I don’t know. But he feels familiar, as if I have some sort of connection with him.’ He pauses. ‘And the bones have moved themselves.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’m imagining things.’
‘You’ve spent too much time with old relics,’ she said.
‘I know. It’s mad. But I feel I know him somehow. As if he’s trying to tell me something.’ He turns to her and smiles. ‘Take no notice of me. I’ll be out of your hair soon.’
‘No you won’t. I need your help with the exhibition. The trustees have decided they want to make a big thing about it – a launch early next year probably, lots of fuss and media. The full works.’
‘The “full works”. Yes. I guess that’s what people want now.’ Francis feels that his last pretence of control over the site and the findings has at last gone. He will pack up and say good bye to this figure from the past. He looks back at the painting on the wall, at the person standing behind the altar. The chaplain. In profile you can’t see his expression, all of the artist’s attention has been given to the figure standing opposite him – Boleyn, if that’s who it was. The chaplain may not have even been modelled on a real person. But somehow Francis knows that it was, that this is his man.