Waking Elizabeth (7 page)

“The
Golden Age?” The phrase caught my attention.

“Yes.
 
That’s what they called it.
 
It was a happy pleasant time in England when
she reigned.
 
They named it the Golden Age.”

I
smiled, for some reason the phrase warmed my soul, “I’ll have to look into it.”

“Oh,
the man’s name is Ronan.
 
Ronan
Sutton.
 
He’s here today but he stepped
out to pick up an artifact that is due to be photographed for our newest book
on the crown jewels.”

“Oh,
I don’t want to bother anybody,” I hesitated.

“It’s
not a bother, he enjoys it.
 
Stop back by
in an hour or so if you don’t mind,” she waved as I headed out the door.

I
was overwhelmed with all there was to see and do so I started with the obvious
which was a tour of the Crown Jewels.
 
I
thought of Geoff as I stood on the motorized people mover as it whisked me
slowly past the beautiful gems.
 
I
couldn’t help but stop and wonder why there weren’t armed guards
everywhere.
 
The only people I’d seen had
been those men wearing the huge red and black outfits and I wondered if they
could fend off an attack if someone really wanted to get their hands on those
jewels.
 
Forty minutes later I was
wandering in the center of the fortress watching the huge ravens while reading
their story printed on the sign.
 
I
counted 4 in front of me, all of them picking through the grass or just
watching with their beady black eyes.
 
I
was fascinated when I read that it was a widely held belief that 6 ravens must
be present at the tower at all times or the monarchy would fall.
 
I walked a little further and found a strange
monument situated on brick pavers near a perfectly manicured grassy spot.
 
Walking towards it I felt a strange
foreboding.
 
Somewhere behind me one of the
ravens squawked loudly.
 
Tower Green
.
 
It sounded somewhat familiar so I moved
closer to the plaque and found it contained a list of names.
 
Anne
Boleyn.
 
Reading her name etched into
the marble made me shiver.
 
I knew her
name well enough.
 
She was one of the
wives of King Henry and she was also Elizabeth’s mother.
 
Instinctively I reached out to run a shaky
finger over the letters of her name etched in the marble.
 
My mouth became dry and tears stung my
eyes.
 
A raven shrieked nearby and
without warning swooped so close to me that I could feel its wings brush
against my face.
 
Startled, I looked up
and snatched my hand away just in time for when he came to rest it was on the
very plaque that I was reading.
 
I backed
away, feeling uneasy as the bird watched me suspiciously.
 
I looked down at the monument and the bricks
beneath and I couldn’t help but wonder how she must have felt, betrayed by her
husband and knowing that she would never see her daughter again as she was led
to her execution.
 
Sadness filled me and
I forced myself to turn away, unable to hide the tears that were forming in my
eyes.
 
I saw a sign that said Line of
Kings and I strode quickly towards the building in order to escape the bloody
site and the bizarre behavior of the raven.
 

Chapter
8

B
ack at the Visitors
Center the door opened and Ronan Sutton ducked inside carrying a small box
protectively under his arm.
 
“Good
Afternoon Beatrice,” he smiled at the familiar face behind the counter, “Slow
day today, no?”

Beatrice
grinned, “I’ve not seen it so empty in weeks.
 
You would think we had bad weather or something.”

Ronan
shrugged and shed his brown sports coat and hung it on the hook outside his
office, “Maybe something else is going on and keeping folks away.”

“Did
you pick it up?” Beatrice asked, her eyes fixated on the small box.

Ronan’s
lips turned up in a smile as he placed the box in the middle of his desk,
gently caressing the top of it with his thumb, “I did. She’s a beauty
Beatrice.
 
It’s breathtaking.”

“When
is the photographer coming?”

“This
afternoon.
 
I only have it for a
day.
 
I was duly instructed to return it
before sundown tomorrow.”

Beatrice
smiled, “Fascinating.
 
I would love to
see it.
 
Let me know when you start the
pictures and I’ll pop my head in.”
 
Beatrice continued with her log entries for the day but something nagged
in the back of her mind and she tapped her fingers on the desk, feeling as if
she needed to remember something.

“Bored?”
Ronan slipped up behind her to retrieve his phone messages.

“No.
 
I was going to tell you something, but I’ve
forgotten,” Beatrice knitted her brows in dismay.

Ronan
gave her a deep throaty laugh, his hazel eyes alive with mischief, “I hope it
wasn’t important.”

“I’ll
remember.
 
I’m getting old you know,”
Beatrice shrugged.

Ronan
gave her shoulder a playful squeeze, “You don’t look a day over forty.”
 
Disappearing into his office he reached into
his desk drawer and withdrew a pair of gloves.
 
Donning them, he carefully opened the box and his eyes ignited with delight
as he stared at the tiny piece of jewelry carefully nestled within the folds of
white silk in the box.
 
“I could look at
this for hours, Beatrice.
 
It’s the most
amazing thing.
 
It’s hard to believe that
Elizabeth wore this very ring.”

Beatrice
slapped her hand against the wood counter, “That’s it!
 
Elizabeth.
 
I remember now.”
 
Beatrice went to
the doorway of his office to continue, “A girl came by earlier, a tourist, one
of the few I’ve seen today.
 
She was
asking about Elizabeth.”

“Oh
yeah?” Ronan was transfixed by the ring and didn’t look up as he reached in and
carefully retrieved it with his gloved fingers, “What was she asking?”

“She
asked if there was a museum dedicated to her in London.”

Ronan
smiled, “There should be, but there’s not,” he answered emphatically while
still gazing at the ring.

“I
told her to come by and see you.
 
I said
that you were an expert in all things Elizabethan and that you loved to talk
about it and could probably answer any of her questions.”
 
Beatrice watched as Ronan tenderly inspected
the ring, “She also asked about her things.
 
It was certainly a new question for me.
 
I had to think about the answer.”

This
finally caught Ronan’s attention causing him to look away from the ring and
towards Beatrice, “Her things?”

“Yes.
 
She asked me where Elizabeth’s things were.”

Ronan’s
attention was now solely focused on Beatrice, “She wanted to know where
Elizabeth’s belongings were?”

“Yes.
 
I told her that there was a saddle in Warwick
and that her gown and other things were at Sudeley.
 
I couldn’t rightly remember if there was
anything else.”

Ronan
thought about the odd request for a few seconds before shrugging and placing
the ring back in the box, “Well, maybe she’ll come back by.”

“Maybe
she will.
 
You couldn’t miss her, that’s
for sure,” Beatrice answered and turned away towards her desk.

Ronan’s
attention was roused once more, “Oh yeah?
 
Why is that?”

“She’s
a beautiful girl.
 
She appeared to be
alone ... American at that.
 
She seemed a
tad out of place, that’s all.”

Ronan
placed the box in a safe that was within the wall of his office.
 
Shedding his gloves he asked, “What did she
look like?”

“She
was striking.
 
She had big dark brown
eyes and long red hair.
 
She was from
Virginia.
 
I told her I’d always wanted
to go there.”

Ronan
tossed the gloves on his desk and walked towards Beatrice, “Red hair?”

“Yep.”

“How
do you know she’s from Virginia?”

“I
had to look at her license.
 
She had a
Heritage Pass and this was her first stop so I had to activate it for her.”

Ronan
came to stand next to Beatrice and pointed to the computer, “Pull her up for
me, will you?”

Beatrice
gave Ronan a strange look before typing in the computer and pulling up the card
information along with a scanned picture of Ellie’s driver’s license.
 
Impatiently, Ronan looked over Beatrice’s
shoulder as the picture slowly came up on screen.
 

“Enlarge
it for me, will you?” he asked.
 

Beatrice
enlarged the photo and Ronan’s gaze fastened on the dark eyes that stared back
at him from the screen, “Ellie Regan,” he whispered, his voice caressing her
name.

“That’s
her,” Beatrice said, “She’s a beauty, huh?”

“She
is,” Ronan eyes gleamed as he took in the long red hair that draped down her
shoulder in the picture, “Beatrice, do you know what the surname Regan means?”

“No?”

“It
means royal,” Ronan reached for his coat and shrugged into it.
 
Running his fingers through his tussled dark
hair he headed for the door, “I’m off to find her.
 
If I miss her and she comes here, please ask
her to wait for me.”
 
He gave Beatrice a
smile as he pushed open the door, “You know I’ve always had a thing for red
heads.”

I
stood alone in the magnificent museum that housed several dozen full bodied
sets of armor and was quietly studying a beautifully carved wooden horse
encased in its own armor, marveling that the beast would have been able to move
about much less run in such a thing.
 
There was a family of tourist in front of me, the toddler wailing that
he was ready to leave.
 
The mother gave
me an apologetic glance and I smiled at her, attempting to put her at
ease.
 
We were alone in the room, and the
cries of the child echoed throughout and seemed to bounce off the metal armor
around the room.
 
Deciding they could
take it no more, the family whisked past me and towards the door leaving me
alone in the huge space.
 

I
walked further down and spotted a large set of armor encased in glass and
standing majestically apart from the rest.
 
It was massive, built for a very large man and glistened with silver and
gold in the bright white spotlights.
 
I
read the plaque.
 
Henry VIII.
 
I smiled, of
course this ostentatious piece armor would be his.
 

“Impressive,
isn’t it?”

His
voice startled me and I gasped, and covered my chest, “Oh my gosh.
 
You scared me to death!”

The
man flashed me a brilliant smile and I was immediately struck by his
presence.
 
He was a tall handsome man, if
I had to guess, mid-thirties.
 
He had a
perfectly chiseled face with a rugged scruff of a beard that looked as if he’d
forgotten to shave for a week.
 
I knew
men that took great pains to look like this and none were ever able to pull it
off as effortlessly as this man did.
 

“Sorry.
 
I thought you heard me come in when the
screaming child went out.”

I
shook my head, “I didn’t.
 
I thought I
was alone.”

“Ellie
Regan?”

I
was confused.
 
How the hell did he know
my name?
 
“Uh oh, I’ve done something
wrong, haven’t I?”

He
laughed, and the sound made my heart flutter.
 

“I
certainly hope not.
 
I’m Ronan
Sutton.
 
Beatrice mentioned me at the
Visitors Center?” he extended a hand to me.
 

I
immediately relaxed and reached for his outstretched hand.
 
As my fingers entwined with his I got a
sudden jolt, as if I had been shocked by some sort of electric current.
 
I stammered for a reply but didn’t move to
withdraw my hand that was now firmly grasped in his, “Um … I’m Ellie, Ellie
Regan.”

As
if impervious to what was passing between us, he held my eyes boldly,
unblinking.
 
How could he not feel it?
 
Feeling a tad stupid, I reluctantly pulled my
hand away, “You didn’t have to track me down.
 
I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“It’s
a slow day,” he answered lazily, eyeing me with a decidedly strange gleam in
his eye, “So, you had some questions about Elizabeth?”

I
blushed profusely when he mentioned her name.
 
I could feel the heat radiating from my cheeks, “Well, yes … nothing
substantial.
 
I asked if there was a
museum dedicated to her, here.
 
The lady
told me there wasn’t.”

Ronan
shook his head, “No.
 
Unfortunately there
isn’t.
 
But there should be.
 
There are more than enough things to fill
it,” he casually shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark olive slacks,
“She said you asked about her things.”

“Oh,”
again, I felt my cheeks blaze in the bright lights of the museum, “I just
didn’t know if there was anything here that belonged to her.”

He
stared at me strangely which made my question seem unreasonably
ridiculous.
 
I couldn’t believe I had
asked that and now this man had tracked me down and I felt totally and
completely stupid.
 

“There
are very few of her things left.
 
There
is a saddle and some gloves and boots, some letters, and some books.
 
They are scattered about England and are not
all in one place.”

I
raised my head, “Books?
 
Books of
hers?
 
Is there a small one about this
big,” I showed him the shape and size with my fingers, “Its dark leather with
some strange writing on the front, maybe with initials?”

He
again eyed me suspiciously and I wondered if I had gone too far.
 
I was of course describing the book I had
seen in my vision with Mona, the one Elizabeth had under the tree.

“What
you’re describing is her prayer book, and yes, it does exist and is on display
at Sudeley Castle.”

“How
far is that?
 
Is it close by?” I
immediately asked.

“It’s
a good two hours from London,” he answered quickly, “You seem really interested
in her?
 
Are you a teacher or …” he was
looking at me to finish his answer.
 

“No.
 
Nothing so interesting.
 
I’m a dance instructor, ballet mostly,
obviously American,” I shrugged as if I were apologizing.

His
smile deepened, “Ballet?”

“Yes,”
I nodded.

 
“She was a dancer, you know,” he said, turning
to focus his attention on the armor that silently stood watch over us, “She
danced for thirty minutes every morning when she woke up.”

I
blinked in surprise.
 
It was something I
hadn’t read about, “Really?”

“Yes,
and this is her father’s armor, as I’m sure you know,” he pointed towards the
glass, “He was a proud man, obviously.”

I
blushed when I realized he was motioning to the enormously outrageous codpiece
that was attached to the armor, “Obviously,” I grinned, “And from what I’ve
read it got him into a lot of trouble …”

To
my surprise Ronan laughed, “That it did.”