The Ghost Tree: Gripping historical fiction from the Sunday Times Bestseller

Prologue

Thomas

‘It is ordained that when we die and travel forward on our journey, we forget our previous lives. But sometimes they linger at the fringe of consciousness and sometimes we are forced to remember by the curiosity of others. No man is an island, the poet said, and it is axiomatic that what some prefer to keep hidden, others wish to expose.

‘And so one life in particular I recall now, a life like all lives filled with joy and sadness in equal measure, a life of ambition and fame but also of concern and care for the rights and miseries of my fellow men and women, and a life blighted in part by my own foolishness, a life whose danger I bequeathed unknowing to those who came after me.

‘We were a large family and an affectionate one, a family imbued with the Christian principles of generations, but there is still much to explore for the diligent burrower after secrets and there is danger there, not of my making, but instilled by the intentions of others for good – also for evil.

‘My forefathers came to me with warnings; I heard them but I did not always heed. I now realise how great must have been their anguish as they battered upon my consciousness and I raced on without pausing to listen. I learned but it was hard and it was dangerous.

‘It is not within my power to do more than warn those who meddle with what is past; I can only speak to those who listen.

‘I am watching over you, child of my children, but if you fail to hear my warnings, or choose not to heed them, I can do nothing to save you …’

1

1760

Scampering down the steep, echoing spiral stair, the small boy dragged open the heavy door and peered out into the close. In his family’s airy flat on the top floor of the tenement it was still daylight, the south-facing windows lit by the last rays of the setting sun. Down here, where the tall grey buildings closed in to shut out the light, it was almost dark. He closed the door behind him, careful to lower the latch silently so the clunk of metal on metal did not echo up the stone stairway, then he skipped across the yard to the archway that led out into the High Street.

He knew he was forbidden to come out by himself. He knew the crowded streets were full of potential danger for a ten-year-old boy on his own. He didn’t care. He was bored. His mother thought he was studying his books, his father was closeted in his study and his brothers and sisters, all older by far than himself, were busy about their own business. Out here on the streets of Edinburgh it was noisy, busy and exciting. He looked this way and that, hesitating for only a moment, then he ran out into the crowds where the din was overwhelming. Music spilled out from a tavern nearby; people were shouting, the sound of hooves echoed back and forth from the walls as did the rattle of wheels on the rough cobbles that paved the narrow street.

He headed up the hill towards St Giles’ kirk and the tempting range of shops and booths nestling against its northern walls, and was gazing longingly into the bowed window of a pie shop when a fight broke out only feet from him, the two men shouting at each other quickly surrounded by crowds, yelling at them, cheering them on. The quarrel grew more heated, blows were exchanged, then one of the men drew a dirk. Thomas barely saw what happened next but he heard the gasp of the crowd as the blade found its mark, saw both men hesitate, seemingly equally appalled, as the ribald comments from the onlookers died away and fell silent and the shorter of the men slumped slowly to his knees and then forward onto his face. Thomas saw the scarlet stain spreading down the man’s jacket and onto the cobbles as he fell, his face contorted with pain as he gave a final spasm and then lay still.

The crowd scattered, leaving Thomas staring at the slumped figure. Seeing the little boy standing there alone, a woman turned and grabbed his arm, dragging him away. After a moment’s hesitation he followed her, too shocked to protest, turning to look over his shoulder at the body lying motionless on the ground as the rain began to fall. Someone had summoned the Town Guard. He heard a whistle and angry shouts. It was too late. The killer had vanished into the network of alleyways beyond the kirk.

As he watched, the boy saw the shadow of the dead man rise up and stand looking down at his own body. He held out his hands in a pathetic, futile gesture of protest, then he looked up. Thomas thought he saw the man’s eyes seeking his own, pleading, before he faded slowly away.

He stood watching for one horrified second, then he turned and ran, ducking out of reach of the woman’s motherly grasp, dodging through the crowds back down the street towards the safety of Gray’s Close. He reached the familiar shadows of the entry, hurtling in, away from the horrors of the scene behind him, crossing the rain-slippery cobbles, desperate to get home. Fumbling with the latch he pushed the heavy door open, pausing in the impenetrable darkness at the foot of the stairwell, trying to get his breath, tears pouring down his face, before heading up the long steep spiral stairs. On, he went, his small feet pounding up the worn stone steps, on and on, up and up …

Ruth Dunbar woke with a start, staring into the blackness of the bedroom in her father’s Edinburgh house, grasping for the dream, still feeling the little boy’s terror as he ran, still seeing the drama unfold, raising her eyes in her dream from the body lying in the dark street to the shadowed grey walls, the crowds, illuminated so dramatically by the flaming torch held in the raised hand of a bystander, her gaze travelling on up to the great crown steeple of St Giles’, starkly unmistakable halfway down Edinburgh’s spine, silhouetted against the last crimson streaks of the stormy sunset.

She hugged her pillow to her, her breath steadying slowly as her eyes closed again.

In the morning she would remember nothing of the dream. Only much later would it surface to haunt her.

2

The Present Day

‘Presumably you’re going to sell the house?’ Harriet Jervase sat back on the sofa and studied her friend Ruth’s face.

There was an almost tangible silence in the room and then, clearly audible, footsteps moving softly through the hallway outside and up the stairs.

Ruth put her finger to her lips and stood up. Tiptoeing to the door, she pulled it open. The hall was empty, crepuscular beneath the high ceiling of the staircase well. She reached for the light switch. The austere hanging lamp with its faded shade threw an awkward cold light which left shadows over the turns in the staircase. Upstairs she heard the sound of a door closing.

She went back into the living room. ‘That man gives me the creeps,’ she said, throwing herself down in her chair again. ‘He was listening at the door, I’m sure he was.’

‘Why don’t you tell him to go?’ Harriet was Ruth’s oldest friend. The two women had been at school together and had remained in touch over the years since. To Ruth, the only child of comparatively elderly parents, Harriet had been the nearest thing to a sibling. It was a given that she would have come up to Edinburgh for Ruth’s father’s funeral.

‘I can’t just throw him out. He was so kind to Dad.’

The presence of Timothy Bradford in the house had been an unwelcome surprise when she arrived. He appeared to have been staying there for some time, very much at home.

‘Have you asked him what his plans are?’

Ruth shook her head. ‘It’s too soon.’

‘No, it’s not.’ Harriet’s voice was crisp. ‘He’s obviously not going to go until you say something.’ She gave Ruth a quizzical glance. ‘I know you feel you should have come up here sooner when your dad fell ill, but be honest, Ruth, he didn’t tell you there was a problem; you came as soon as you knew. And if Timothy was comfortable looking after him, that was his choice. On his own admission, your dad has given him free bed and board in Edinburgh for months, but it’s over now. Whatever you decide to do with the house, he has to go.’

‘You’re right,’ Ruth agreed gloomily.

‘Do you want me to tell him?’

‘No!’ Ruth was shocked. ‘No, of course not.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow after you’ve gone.’ She frequently found herself resenting Harriet’s calm assumption that she was the more efficient of the two of them, but it wasn’t as if they saw each other often enough these days to make an issue of something so trivial.

‘So, what will you do after you’ve got rid of him?’ For all their closeness there had been long gaps when they hadn’t seen each other, especially since Harriet had moved away from London and down to the West Country. She surveyed her friend fondly. Ruth had large grey eyes, her most striking feature; as a child they had always been the first thing people mentioned about her. Her hair on the other hand was a light golden brown, something she had never bothered about and which had become streaked with silver at the temples at a remarkably early age. It had suited her then and suited her now. Harriet had always felt strangely protective of Ruth. She was one of those people who seemed too vulnerable to exist in the normal world; which was rubbish. At some level Ruth was tough as old boots.

‘I haven’t any plans yet. I’m not sorry I gave up teaching; I’d been there too long and I was growing stale. I was just learning to appreciate my freedom as mistress of my own destiny when I found out Dad was so ill and I thought I’d have to move up here permanently to look after him.’ Ruth sighed sadly. ‘No more freedom after all. That was why I rented out my London flat. I didn’t realise how short a time he had left.’

‘And what of the husband?’ Harriet never stooped to giving Richard his name.

Ruth laughed quietly. ‘The ex-husband is fine. You saw him at the funeral. We agreed to go our own ways. We still talk occasionally. We’re friends.’

There was a painful pause, a silence that covered so much that had happened: her longing for a child and the bleak discovery that Rick was unlikely ever to father a baby, the failed IVF, the decision to give up trying, the sense of empty pointlessness that followed.

Harriet cleared her throat uncomfortably. ‘So, you really are fancy-free?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘With no London flat, at least for now, but instead an Edinburgh house.’

‘Yup.’

‘Any gorgeous men on the horizon?’

‘No.’

‘Not Timothy?’

‘Definitely not Timothy.’

‘So, what did you do with yourself those last few months before you came up here? If you weren’t working, you must have been doing something.’

‘Living off my share of the sale of Rick’s and my house. I bought the flat with my half and that left me some change to give me the chance to stop and think about what I really want to do with the rest of my life. Meanwhile, I was free to read the books I want to read instead of set texts; explore the world, relax; take up hobbies for the first time since I grew up!’

‘Stamp collecting?’ Harriet’s voice was dry, though there was a twinkle in her eye.

Ruth laughed. ‘If you must know, I’ve started researching my family tree. My mother’s family tree, to be exact.’

‘Bloody hell, Ruth! I thought your father’s attitude to your ancestors would have put you off that for life.’

Ruth grimaced. ‘On the contrary. I always planned to do it one day, if only to show him I didn’t care how much he hated them. Besides, I want to find a family, any family. Dad was my last living relative.’ There was a long pause. ‘So,’ she changed the subject abruptly, ‘enough of that. Let’s talk about you. You haven’t told me what you’ve been up to.’

‘I’m still writing.’ Harriet leaned forward, as always intense, her short red hair framing a face focused with sudden excitement. She hesitated momentarily then went on. ‘I’m just starting a book about the vital role of women in the Second World War. Code-breakers, SOE – the specially-trained people who went overseas as spies and saboteurs – pilots, that sort of thing, telling the story of one particular woman from each category. I’ve arranged to go and stay with some friends in North Berwick while I’m up here. Liz and Pete Fleming. Liz discovered that her grandmother worked for SOE. She was dropped behind enemy lines and worked undercover near Paris. Can you imagine how brave you had to be to do that? So I’m writing a chapter about her.’ Her eyes were sparkling. ‘Another of my subjects is a woman called Dion Fortune who lived in Glastonbury.’ Harriet lived in a cottage in the famously eccentric Somerset town. It was there she had already written several well-received popular biographies. ‘Dion was a famous occultist. She lived at the foot of the Tor and conducted séances and meditations there. During the war, and this is the fascinating bit, she organised her followers to fight Hitler with magical energies and imagined armies of Arthurian knights with swords. You did know Hitler was into the occult?’

‘I think I’d heard, yes.’ Ruth was looking bemused.

‘Comparatively few people have heard of Dion these days, but that’s the point. These are unsung heroines and she’s probably the oddest of them all.’

‘Magic was my mother’s thing,’ Ruth put in wistfully. ‘She’d have loved Glastonbury. She used to go to crystal shops and buy incense and pretty stones. She kept them in a bag to calm her nerves; she used to meditate. Dad hated her interest in all that stuff. I can still remember the row they had when he caught her looking at them. She tried to stand up for herself, but he sulked like a spoilt child if she tried to defy him and as far as I know she gave it all up.’ Her face clouded as she remembered. ‘To him, meditation and prayer were pointless at best and childish superstition at worst.’

Intellectually she understood why her father had hated religion, or, his second relentless dislike, anything or anyone whom he regarded as posh, but what she had never been able to forgive was the way he had taken his resentments on both counts out on his own wife.

Presumably it was an instinctive sense of self-defence as she was growing up that preserved Ruth from any interest in history or religion; she left home as soon as she finished school, first to study English literature at Cambridge University, then to learn to teach, then to take up a series of posts teaching English. She had even married an English teacher.

She and Rick supported each other through the heartbreaks and trials that beset the marriage, but something in their relationship died with their hopes of a family. They began to drift apart and it was just after their tenth wedding anniversary that Ruth had rebelled and ended both marriage and career.

‘There was a lot about your mother that your dad didn’t like, wasn’t there,’ Harriet said cautiously. ‘Even when we were at school. I remember you telling me about her aristocratic ancestors.’

‘And those he hated above all. Poor Mummy. I’m not sure why he ever married her, but they were happy as long as she toed the official line.’ Ruth paused. ‘I suspect he didn’t realise when he first met her how well connected the family was, but as soon as he did all his left-wing prejudices kicked in with a vengeance. He found her stories intensely embarrassing. It would have destroyed his street cred if his Marxist pals had found out.’

Harriet smiled. ‘But she didn’t have a title or anything?’

‘Good lord, no. We’re talking generations back; hundreds of years even. The blue blood had worn extremely thin by the time it reached Mummy and, in me, well, it’s virtually non-existent! No more than the occasional effete gene.’ Ruth laughed. ‘But back in the eighteenth century one of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers,’ she was counting on her fingers, ‘a chap called Thomas Erskine, was Lord Chancellor of England. It sounded incredibly grand and impressive and sort of out of a fairy tale – what?’

Harriet had let out a strangled squeak. ‘Lord Erskine was one of Dion’s spirit guides!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You wouldn’t credit it, would you! What a coincidence!’ Harriet gave a gurgle of delight. ‘I knew I’d come across the name somewhere, but I’d forgotten it was you who had told me about him. A neighbour of mine lent me a book about Dion to read on the train and start filling in some background for my next chapter, and it mentions him! Those séances I told you about? Various exotic people like Confucius came to instruct her in the esoteric arts when she was at the start of her career as an occultist, and Lord E, as she called him, was one of them!’

Ruth gazed at her, bemused. ‘Why? How?’

‘I’ve no idea. In fact, you can tell me when you’ve done your family research! I’ll leave the book with you when I go and you can read it yourself. It’s a bit intense, to be honest, downright incomprehensible at times, but I love all this mystical stuff! I suppose I couldn’t live in Glasto and not know a bit about it. I’ve friends who are deeply involved in it all. Did your mother ever mention that he had a spooky side?’

‘No.’ Ruth was still staring at her in disbelief. ‘When I was old enough to learn what discretion was and realised what a difficult man my father could be and that I could be trusted to keep quiet, Mummy did tell me stories about them all and I loved listening to them. They were everything our lives at home weren’t. Romantic and exotic and part of history, but not spooky, no. Far from it.’ She gave Harriet a tolerant smile. ‘What I liked was that they all had huge families and, unlike Dad, seem to have been so proud of where they came from. Hence my new hobby. I want to find out about them. And being in Edinburgh is perfect because that was where the story started.’

‘And you’re not afraid your father’s ghost will haunt you if you do this?’ Harriet looked at her quizzically.

‘If he does,’ Ruth retorted firmly, ‘I shall have a stern word! I’m doing this for Mummy as much as me. She would have loved it.’