Epilogue

LYDIA WARD
1752 - 1826

Kate stood before the stone for some time.

The churchyard was quiet. Beyond its wall came the occasional rattle of wheels and the indistinct sound of voices from the surrounding streets, but little disturbed the rows of stones. Above them, York Minster rose beyond the rooftops and trees.

It had taken only a little more searching after Nottingham to find where Lydia Ward had been buried..

She had bought flowers on the way. White ones, chosen without much thought from a woman selling them near the market.

Kate crouched and placed them at the foot of the stone.

The earth was damp beneath her boots. Someone had cleared away the worst of the weeds recently, though a few had begun to return around the edge of the grave.

For several moments she remained there.

She thought of her grandmother at eleven years old, standing beneath the yew at Brailsford while her mother laid flowers before a woman they believed dead.

By then Catherine was somewhere far to the north, already beginning the life that would eventually bring her to York.

Kate wondered what she had been doing that morning. Perhaps by then she had already chosen her new name.

The bells of the Minster began to ring. Kate looked up and smiled. Catherine had complained about them for years and apparently never found a reason to move somewhere quieter.

There were many things Kate would have liked to ask her.

Whether she had ever regretted leaving. Whether she had missed Derbyshire. Whether, as the years passed, she had sometimes heard the name Catherine Bell and felt for a moment that somebody was calling to her.

There could be no answers to those questions now. Perhaps there did not need to be.

Kate rose and brushed a little earth from her glove.

The bells continued above the rooftops.

She looked once more at Lydia Ward’s name, then turned towards the gate.

Her leave from the school was nearly over.

By the time she returned there would be lessons waiting, exercise books requiring correction and, almost certainly, some dispute between two girls which both would insist had been entirely the fault of the other.

Kate walked out through the gate and joined the road back towards the city.

Behind her, the flowers remained at the foot of the stone.

Ahead, York carried on around her.