Page 19 of The Forsaken (Echoes from the Past #4)

THIRTEEN

“Gabe, do you know anything about Holystone Priory? It’s not too far from here, is it?” Quinn asked as she pulled on a pair of track pants and a T-shirt.

Gabe rested his hip against the bureau, lost in thought.

“No, it isn’t too far. The Holystone Priory was the home of a cloistered order of Augustine nuns before it was looted and destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

It was built next to a Lady’s Well, which was believed to be a place of great mysticism and power.

My mum actually took me there when I was a boy,” Gabe said.

“I kept staring at the Celtic cross rising out of the water, expecting something to happen. I thought it was frightening.”

“I didn’t see a cross.”

“The cross was erected during Victorian times, so it wouldn’t have been there in the Middle Ages.”

“Why did your mum take you there? Did she want to visit the ruins?” Quinn asked.

“No, we went directly to the Lady’s Well,” Gabe replied. “Come to think of it, it is really odd that she took me there. I’ll have to ask her if she remembers. Why do you ask about Holystone?”

“The owner of the rosary was a postulant there.”

“I wonder how she wound up here,” Gabe remarked as he began to dress for the day.

“She was brought here by your ancestors, Hugh and Guy de Rosel. I didn’t think she’d stay.”

“Did she? ”

“I don’t know yet. I’m working on the assumption that the remains we found are Guy de Rosel. Kate nursed him after he was gravely wounded at the Battle of Towton.”

Gabe’s jaw tensed at the mention of Towton.

The Wars of the Roses was his area of expertise, and the Battle of Towton, fought more than five centuries ago, still pained him since his ancestors had been on that battlefield and fought for the losing side.

“What were they like, Hugh and Guy?” Gabe asked as he searched under the bed for his trainers.

“Guy was unconscious most of the time, so it’s hard to say anything about his personality. He was handsome, though. Kind of looked like you when I first met you at that dig,” Quinn added, smiling wistfully.

“And Hugh?”

Quinn shrugged as she tried to marshal her thoughts.

“Hugh wasn’t as attractive, but he had an air of competence about him.

He was the type of man who got things done.

He was a bit gruff too, but I suppose, given the fact that he’d just lost one brother and was about to lose the other, a little gruffness wasn’t unexpected. ”

“And Kate? What was her surname?”

Quinn was about to reply when Phoebe’s voice drifted up from the foyer. “Are you both up? I’ve come to collect some things.”

“You go on, Gabe. I’ll be right down. I’m curious about this visit to Holystone,” Quinn added as she reached for her hairbrush.

By the time Quinn came down, Phoebe and Gabe were already installed in the front parlor, mugs of tea in hand.

Phoebe still refused to go into the kitchen, so Gabe made tea and toast and set their breakfast on a low table before the sofa.

Phoebe was buttering a piece of toast for herself but held it out to Quinn while Gabe poured her a cup of tea .

“You look peaky,” Phoebe said as she studied Quinn. “Nightmares still plaguing you?”

Quinn nodded.

“Can’t your doctor prescribe something to help you sleep? You need your rest.”

“I don’t want to take any more medication than I have to,” Quinn replied. “I’m taking enough as is. I’ll manage. I try to kip during the day, while Emma’s at school.”

“Mum, do you remember taking me to Holystone Priory when I was a boy?” Gabe asked as he spread marmalade on his toast. “I must have been around six or seven.”

“You were five,” Phoebe replied. She looked away, clearly uncomfortable with the topic.

“Why did we go there?” Gabe persisted.

“I wanted to visit the Lady’s Well and had no one to leave you with. Your father had gone fishing with some of his mates and didn’t want you under his feet.”

“Why did you want to visit the well?” Gabe asked. “It doesn’t seem like your sort of place.”

“I wanted to pray.”

A hush fell over the room as Gabe gaped at his mother in astonishment. “But you’re not Catholic,” he finally said. “Why would you want to pray to the Virgin Mary?”

Phoebe sighed and laid down her uneaten toast. “I wanted to pray for a baby.”

Gabe and Quinn sat in shocked silence, waiting for Phoebe to elaborate.

She was the type of woman who went to church to socialize, not to pray.

She had once quoted Karl Marx at a dinner party, saying that religion was the opium of the masses.

Graeme had laughed at her and called her a “closet socialist” in front of their friends.

Phoebe hadn’t liked that one bit, but she’d stuck to her guns.

When Graeme died, Phoebe had chosen to have him cremated instead of having a religious funeral service, a decision that hadn’t sat well with Gabe.

“I suffered several miscarriages before Gabe was born,” Phoebe explained, speaking mostly to Quinn.

“I was devastated, and after nearly a decade of marriage I longed for a baby with a desperation only a childless woman could understand. In this day and age, they would have run tests and tried to figure out why I kept miscarrying, but fifty years ago the doctors blamed me. It was always, ‘Did you lift anything heavy? Did you allow yourself to become agitated? Did you take too much pleasure in marital relations?’ That sort of thing.”

“Why would it matter if you enjoyed marital relations?” Gabe asked, baffled.

“Because, my dear boy, some doctors believed that an orgasm could bring on a miscarriage,” Phoebe explained, making Gabe blush.

“After my last miscarriage, they put me on the maternity ward. You know, just to drive the stake deeper into my heart. I lay there, watching besotted new mothers nursing their babies. I just wanted to die,” she said with a sigh.

“I’m so sorry,” Quinn said and reached for Phoebe’s hand. “I can’t even begin to imagine how painful that must have been for you.”

Phoebe nodded. “There was a young woman in the next bed. Sheila, she was called. She said that she and her husband had been trying for seven years. She couldn’t get pregnant.

Then her mother told her to go pray at the Lady’s Well at Holystone.

She refused time and time again until she finally went.

Had nothing left to lose, she said. Nine months later she gave birth to her first child.

She went again and had another baby shortly afterward. She swore it was a miracle.”

“So you went?” Gabe asked .

“I went. I got on my knees and I prayed to the Blessed Virgin, and to whatever pagan gods inhabited that mystic place long before Christianity, to give me a living baby. I swore I’d never ask for anything again if I had one child that survived.”

“And you had Gabe?” Quinn asked, stunned.

“Gabe was born less than a year later, healthy and strong. It was a miracle, in my book.”

“Why did you go back?” Gabe asked. He glanced away when Quinn gave him a loaded look, implying that he was being obtuse.

“I wanted another child. I was happy and busy with Gabe, but he was getting older, about to start school, and I began longing for another child. I wanted a daughter, you see.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work, Mum,” Gabe said.

“No, it didn’t. I prayed, but I wasn’t granted another miracle.

Perhaps it was because I’d promised I wouldn’t ask again.

Or perhaps because I was just too old by that point to get pregnant naturally.

Nowadays, I would still be considered fertile, but in those days, a woman over thirty was considered to be ‘past her prime.’ We tried for several years, but I never got pregnant again.

Still, I think my Gabe is a miracle, and I’ll say so to anyone who asks,” Phoebe concluded defiantly.

This was completely at odds with what Quinn knew of Phoebe’s religious beliefs, but she didn’t question Phoebe’s story.

Perhaps Phoebe had grown disillusioned when she failed to conceive again.

Quinn’s hand subconsciously went to her belly.

A child was a miracle, and she was blessed to have conceived so easily.

“I’m sorry, Phoebe,” Quinn said. It wasn’t until she’d fallen pregnant herself that she’d really given any thought to what her mother and Phoebe must have gone through.

Susan Allenby had been unable to conceive due to endometriosis, while Phoebe had conceived again and again only to lose her babies halfway through the pregnancy.

Both Susan and Phoebe had managed to raise one child, but their paths to motherhood hadn’t been easy—unlike Sylvia, who’d gotten up the duff after one encounter and thrown her baby away.