It was interesting to have the description and pictures of the garden at Lyveden New Bield, which the National Trust had recreated. It enabled Lucy to see what the Knightstone garden had probably looked like before it was destroyed. The Robert Catesby book was more hard going because she didn’t really know what she was looking for and didn’t want to skip any passages in case they were crucial. She kept searching for a reference to the connection between Robert Catesby, Thomas Tresham and the Knights Hospitaller, but although Tresham did seem to pop up everywhere, she couldn’t put her finger on whatever it was that Charlie had discovered.

On impulse, she rang the Museum of the Knights Hospitallers in London.

“I’m not quite sure what it is I’m asking,” Lucy began, when she had been put through to one of the archivists, “but I wondered whether there is any evidence of connection between Knightstone in Oxfordshire and the Knights Hospitaller? I mean, I know they had a monastic grange here, but I’m trying to find out what happened after the dissolution of the monasteries, in particular anything to do with Sir Thomas Tresham. And...erm...the Knights’ treasure.”

She felt self-conscious even mentioning the word treasure but the man at the other end, Nicholas Saint, responded politely and helpfully, as though he was quite accustomed to such enquiries, which, she thought, perhaps he was. From him she learned that Sir Thomas Tresham “the elder,” the man said helpfully, had been the last Grand Prior of the Order before Queen Elizabeth I had closed it down and that there was an old story that when Queen Mary had died, Sir Thomas had taken what was left of the Knights’ treasures and hidden them in the cellars under in the old priory at Knightstone, in the hollow hills.

“We’ve done a lot of research into the legend,” Nicholas said, “and we think it’s a fabrication. Even if the Knights did plan to hide the treasure away for safe-keeping, there wouldn’t have been much of it left at this stage. Henry VIII had already dissolved the Order once and taken its land and possessions. It was only revived for a short time under Mary I before Elizabeth shut it down for good.”

“So we’re not talking about huge piles of gold or that sort of thing?” Lucy said.

Nicholas laughed. “It’s highly unlikely. There might have been some coin or some religious artifacts, and indeed some were discovered hidden at the priory building here in London in the nineteenth century. However there simply wouldn’t have been the time to accumulate a vast treasure horde during Mary I’s reign, nor the time to pay for it and create it either.”

“I see,” Lucy said. “Well, that’s very helpful, thank you.” She put the phone down thinking of all the legends that swirled around Knightstone, of Odin and the Knights Hospitaller and the ghost of Catherine Catesby. Folklore and legend, she thought, might have a large part of imagination in them but sometimes there was also more than a grain of truth—they were based on real people, or places, or events that had happened in history. Perhaps they became magnified but if you dug into their origins there was usually a connection to find...