The Complete Ravenscar Trilogy: The Ravenscar Dynasty, Heirs of Ravenscar, Being Elizabeth. Barbara Taylor Bradford

was idling his time away, and growing bored. Suddenly, he swooped down on me and took my album. Actually, Mother, he grabbed it. Then he pranced around the room, waving it in the air. I thought he would damage some of my best stamps which Papa had given me over the years, so I jumped up, tried to get it. But George kept dodging away from me, taunting me, and he made me angry. I lurched towards him, and naturally he tried to avoid me, and as he did so he tripped over a foot stool and fell against the wall next to the fireplace. It caved in, just like that. George fell inside the wall, but it was very strange because there’s actually a room there.’

      Cecily froze. The priest hole. Closed permanently by Richard when Anne, their first child, was born, her husband had decided that the concealed door must be nailed down, and so it was. He was fearful that a small child might lock herself inside and suffocate before she could be rescued. And so he had made it safe. And no one had ever known about the priest hole except them, and the Deravenel ancestors, of course.

      Cecily opened her mouth to speak and then closed it as the youngest in the family came forward, slowly approached her. His face was solemn, his eyes grave, thoughtful, as they frequently were. He was totally in control of himself, just as he had said he was, much more so than his siblings.

      What had silenced Cecily was the black leather notebook Richard clutched in his hands. Surely it was her husband’s missing black notebook, wasn’t it? The one she had searched for, and Ned, too, in his father’s rooms in London.

      ‘I climbed into the wall,’ the boy was saying to her. ‘To help Georgie, Mama. He was flat on his back on the floor. Between the walls. That’s what I thought at first, but when I went to him I found I was in a little room. There’s a chest in there, and after I helped Georgie to get up I opened the drawers, well, not all of them because one was locked. Anyway, Mother, I found this.’ Moving closer to Cecily, he thrust the black leather book at her.

      Cecily disentangled herself from George’s clinging embrace, and accepted the book from her youngest child. ‘Thank you very much, Dickie,’ she murmured.

      Holding it in her hands she experienced a wonderful flare of hope. Her husband had jotted notes in it almost every day…she opened it eagerly and saw lines and lines of numbers, but few words. There were odd sentences, here and there, but none of them made any sense to her. Disappointment swept through her, and her heart sank. For a brief moment she had thought the book would reveal something important—important to Ned. However, the notes in it were an enigma. Unless there was someone who could decipher them. Was this a code of some kind? Perhaps.

      Oliveri. Instantly, Cecily thought of the Italian, who had apparently been a close colleague of her husband’s, and was obviously so willing to help them in any way he could. Would he know what the numbers meant?

      Meg interrupted her thoughts when she said, ‘Mother, George did take my album, whatever he says. He grabbed it and ran around the room with it.’

      ‘I did not,’ George cried, his anger surfacing.

      ‘George, tell me the truth. Did you do what Meg says?’ Cecily asked, her tone icy.

      ‘No, I didn’t,’ he began, and then his voice faltered under his mother’s fixed and sharp scrutiny.

      ‘I’m asking you for the final time,’ Cecily informed him.

      ‘I only…wanted to…have a look at the stamps,’ he muttered, sounding guilty, looking shamefaced, and he blushed as his mother held him away from her by his shoulders, stared into his eyes.

      ‘I will not tolerate lying, George. Now, apologize to your sister.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled without looking around at Meg.

      ‘Please, Meg, come forward. That’s right, stand next to George. Now George, turn to your sister and say you are sorry and shake her hand. And Meg, you must apologize, too.’

      The two of them did as she asked without any further argument.

      Cecily said, ‘Well, George, you’re not hurt, apparently, none the worse for wear, so do stop whining. Please.’

      The old nursery playroom at Ravenscar was entirely panelled in dark wood. Except for the gaping hole made when George had fallen, it looked perfectly in order. But Cecily understood that part of the panelling might easily be fragile. After all, it was centuries old and some woods did rot with the passing of time.

      Ravenscar had been built in the Elizabethan period, almost four hundred years ago, which was when a priest hole had been created behind a wall which adjoined the fireplace. During the early part of Elizabeth Tudor’s reign there had been religious persecution after the Catholic risings in the north, and many renowned Catholic families like the Deravenels had built priest holes in which to hide priests in the event of sudden surprise, such as the unexpected arrival of soldiers.

      Bending down, Cecily felt the wood around the hole which George had made, and a few pieces instantly crumbled in her hand. It was a little fragile, and George, a sturdy boy, had obviously fallen hard against the panelling.

      Stepping away from the damaged wall, she tried to recall where, all those years ago, her husband had hammered in the nails, and she was gratified when she had no trouble remembering. Six feet up from the baseboard, at the top of the second panel a couple of feet away from the fireplace…that was exactly where he had nailed the small door shut.

      Taking a chair from around the circular table in the middle of the room, Cecily pulled it over to the fireplace wall. Tall and athletic, she was agile. Lifting her long black skirt, she climbed onto the chair, and reaching up she felt around for the nails. They weren’t there anymore, just as she had suspected. She could actually feel the little holes where the nails had been; they had been darkened over with varnish, or dark boot polish, and quite recently. There was no question in her mind that Richard had pulled them out, just as he had hammered them in place not very long after the first baby, Anne, came into the world.

      Stepping cautiously off the chair, Cecily hurried to the fireplace and picked up the poker. Leaning forward, squinting in the bright firelight blazing up the chimney, focusing her eyes intently, she finally spotted the tiny metal lever set in the lower part of the brick fireback. It was hardly visible, covered in soot, and difficult to find even when someone knew exactly where to look for it, as she did.

      Lifting the poker she brought it downward, struck the tiny lever, and instantly the panel, no longer nailed shut, slowly swung open, became a door.

      After replacing the poker, Cecily went to the priest hole and manoeuvred herself inside through the small door. She was quite startled to find the space relatively clean. Obviously her husband had swept out the dust whenever it was that he had finally opened the priest hole for the first time in years.

      Cecily’s main target was the chest; it took only a moment to locate the locked drawer, which she managed to pry open with a pair of scissors.

      The drawer slid out easily, and she experienced a sense of satisfaction and a rush of hope. She had known full well that there would be something inside the locked drawer, something put there for safety by her husband, and indeed there was. It was a second black leather notebook. This one was slightly larger than the first which Richard had discovered; it had her husband’s initials embossed in gold in the bottom corner, and her hand trembled as she reached for it, opened it and began to read. Her excitement grew and grew as she stood there in front of the nursery fire, scanning the pages.

      She did not read for long. She had read enough for the moment to know how important it was for Edward to have this. Hurrying downstairs, she went immediately to the small sitting room which adjoined her bedroom and seated herself at the desk.

      Placing her hands across the top of the private diary, for that was what it was, she stared off into the distance, thinking. This book had to go to Edward as quickly as possible; how to get it there? She did not