Read Online Sail Upon the Land by Josa Young - Free Book Online

secretary came in with a tray, and put it down on the low table in front of Pearl and Bert. There was a pot of tea, milk jug and one cup, and a glass bottle of Coca Cola with a straw sticking out of it.
    Mrs Jenkins indicated that Pearl should help herself to tea and opened the file on her lap.
    ‘Thank you for coming to see me today. I’m sorry for approaching you out of the blue like that, and I hope it hasn’t been inconvenient to come to London, but I felt we needed to proceed quickly.’
    Pearl murmured, ‘No, it’s fine now it’s the holidays, thank you.’
    Mrs Jenkins smiled again and consulted the notes in the file: ‘Now this is a bit complicated, so bear with me.
    ‘I mentioned in my letter that your husband was related to Baillie John Hayes, thirteenth Baron Mount-Hey? He died unmarried and in extreme old age last year having inherited the title during the war when his much younger cousin Robert Langdon Hayes, twelfth Baron, was killed at the Café de Paris in 1941. You may remember the case? A bomb came down through the ventilation shaft and exploded on the dance floor. Everyone believed they were safe underground. So sad.’
    Pearl nodded.
    ‘Anyway, the twelfth Baron had been young and was expected to marry and take over the house and estate, having inherited as a child during the Great War from his second cousin Robert Baillie Hayes, eleventh Baron Mount-Hey, who was killed at Arras in 1917. Robert’s brother and heir, John Francis Hayes, was killed before him in 1916, during the Somme offensive. Neither of them had time to marry or have any children.’
    Pearl nodded again, and Mrs Jenkins continued, ‘Now, as far as we have traced it back, and as trustees we have been in touch with the College of Heralds, your husband was a distant cousin of the late Lord Mount-Hey, and almost definitely his heir by descent from a second son of the eighth Baron.’
    ‘That’s dreadfully sad, so many men being killed in one family. But how on earth do they work out who is related to whom and who gets the title?’ Pearl asked.
    ‘Well,’ said Mrs Jenkins. ‘The original Baillie Hayes was one of the people who helped Charles II escape after the battle of Worcester. The Royalists passed the young king between them like a hot potato until he managed to get across to France. He never forgot the experience, and any of his rescuers who were still alive in 1660 when he returned to the throne were rewarded with titles, coats of arms and so on. But not money, sadly.
    ‘It’s a good story. Albert might like to hear it?’
    ‘Albert? Listen to Mrs Jenkins, please.’ She could see that he wasn’t paying attention but she knew he liked history stories as he borrowed them from the library all the time.
    Mrs Jenkins continued: ‘On his last night in England, Charles stopped at the village of Hey, a few miles inland from Shoreham where a boat was waiting to take him to France. A troop of Parliamentary soldiers arrived at the inn where the King was hiding disguised as a servant. Baillie Hayes, who’d been wounded early in the war fighting as a Royalist, recognised the King while he was unsaddling his “master’s” horse in the stables. He couldn’t go back inside, so Baillie took him home to what was then Hey House, dressed them up as maidservants, and got him away to the sea both riding one of Baillie’s cart horses to disguise their height. They couldn’t stop laughing at each other which nearly got them caught.’
    She paused while Bert snorted into his drink, and then continued, ‘The Mount-Hey coat of arms includes three petticoats – the King liked a joke.’
    She extracted a piece of paper from the folder and passed it to Pearl and Bert. ‘Look, you can see it here.’
    They looked at the picture of a shield with three stylised white petticoats on a blue background, two above and one below, separated by a silver chevron. Above the shield, there was a knight’s helmet with a silver horse’s head on