The Hidden Palace Read online

  THE HIDDEN PALACE

  Dinah Jefferies

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street,

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

  Copyright © Dinah Jefferies 2022

  Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

  Cover photographs © Rekha Garton/Trevillion Images (figure), Jekaterina Sahmanova/Alamy Stock Photo (shoreline) and Shutterstock.com (all other images)

  Dinah Jefferies asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008544621

  eBook Edition © November 2022 ISBN: 9780008546311

  Version: 2022-08-04

  Dedication

  For my family

  Epigraph

  ‘To honour her brave people, I award the George Cross to the Island Fortress of Malta to bear witness to a heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history.’

  King George VI

  15 April 1942

  The British Crown Colony of Malta was a military and naval fortress, and the only Allied base between Gibraltar and Alexandria, Egypt. Between June 1940 and October 1942, the Maltese Islands endured over 3,000 air raids by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Axis submarines also attacked British convoys, thereby denying food and other vital supplies to the islands. The Allied garrison and the people of Malta withstood these attempts to starve or bomb them into submission – consequently the Axis failed to strip the Allies of their key naval base in the Mediterranean. Despite the deprivation they suffered, the Maltese population courageously resisted the bombardment. For this reason, King George VI awarded the George Cross to Malta and its people in recognition of an entire nation’s bravery.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: On Board an Adria Steamship

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Read on for an exclusive preview of the next book in the series – Night Train to Marrakech

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  Also by Dinah Jefferies

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  ON BOARD AN ADRIA STEAMSHIP

  The woman on the deck glanced up as a dozen bad-tempered seabirds yelled and hooted. Fool! You fool. Fool, they cackled, hurtling towards her. She ducked, raising a hand to ward them off, but it was the wind snatching at her hair not the birds. She swallowed, tasted the tang of salt on her tongue with a hint of seaweed. Was she safe? It had been a leap of faith to board this ship in Syracuse and the further she leapt, the further away safety seemed to be. She gazed at the shifting ocean. This was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it?

  The sun began to set and the ship edged towards land. She gripped the railings, leaning over as far as she dared, mesmerised by something moving in the violet water.

  She closed her eyes, felt the breeze cooling her burning cheeks.

  The seabirds shrieked again. She raised her head, opened her eyes, and straightened up. How long had she been clutching the railings, listening to the voices in the sea? Because now, as the sun finally sank into the ocean, the sky was darkening to a deep velvety indigo, with such a sweep of stars that it stole her breath. And right before her eyes, as the ship slid closer to the island, a glittering scene unfolded as if a curtain really had been raised on a fairy world. Spellbound by the sight of the waters in the Grand Harbour dancing with the reflected lights from hundreds of illuminated vessels, she hugged herself, then turned to her companion.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to be all right.’

  CHAPTER 1

  Florence

  England, late August 1944

  Jack cursed under his breath, wincing in pain as he attempted to force the window shut, and Florence coughed, her throat dry and sore. Completely jammed, the window resisted, and the acrid black smoke continued to billow in.

  ‘There’s no point,’ she muttered. ‘Save your strength.’

  ‘It’ll disperse when we’re out of this damn tunnel,’ he said.

  She nodded, leant back against the carriage wall, and slid to the floor where she rested her forehead on drawn-up knees and wrapped her arms around her shins. Anything to escape the smell. Not just engine smoke, but the sour odour of unwashed bodies too, and the cheap tobacco that hung in blue-grey clouds throughout the train and clung to their hair and clothes. Sitting in the corridor like this, crumpled and dirty and trying not to breathe, Florence felt exhausted and not quite able to relinquish the fear lodged in the pit of her stomach.

  They’d been stuck in the dim light of the tunnel for more than three quarters of an hour, and they still had another train to catch before they could even dream of arriving at Exeter station where she hoped Jack’s father would still be waiting.

  Eventually there was a bone-shaking jolt.

  Florence lifted her head and caught Jack’s eye. He nodded as they heard a shrill whistle and a muted cheer from the weary passengers as the wheels turned, clanking and rattling as the train awoke. A thin, uniformed guard climbed over three or four servicemen lying half asleep on the floor by the door, their heaps of kit blocking the corridor. Grumbling to himself, he elbowed his way around the tight group of civilians bunched up next to Jack and Florence and then tripped over Jack’s large, booted feet.

  ‘Westbury,’ he yelled after he had righted himself and glared at them. ‘All change for Exeter.’

  Just as well he had such a loud voice. Not only was it a way to let off steam, but also all the station signs had been removed – so unless you were a local, you had no idea where you were.

  Jack scowled when, very soon after that, the train pulled into Westbury station. ‘Typical,’ he said as he scrambled up from where he’d joined Florence on the floor. ‘If I’d known we were this bloody close we could have just got out and walked.’

  ‘Don’t think I’ll walk anywhere, ever again,’ she said, and meant it.

  He gave her a commiserating smile. It wasn’t easy for him either. As they had made their escape across the Pyrenees mountains, they had both injured themselves. When she’d fallen badly, Jack had reached out to save her, seriously aggravating an old injury sustained when he’d made a bad parachute landing back in the Dordogne. Her legs felt like jelly; his arm was strapped up. Fine pair they were.

  As they joined the crowd shuffling towards the open door people pushed and shoved, desperate to exit the hot train and get to wherever they were going. Fatigued soldiers longing to see their families again, no matter how briefly, had perked up, but the worn-out nurses still in their uniforms stared ahead with glazed eyes. Everyone was grey and drawn.

  ‘Platform for Exeter?’ Jack asked a red-faced platform guard and was told which way to go.

  When the crowd were not too far from the waiting Exeter train, Florence heard two men behind her speaking in a foreign language. She froze and Jack, noticing her distress, took her elbow and propelled her forward.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Jack
said quietly, linking arms with her. ‘Only Polish servicemen. Come on, we need to hurry.’

  Florence knew the men hadn’t been German but was so tired that logic and common sense had deserted her. She could never reveal her secret, not now, not back home in the Dordogne, nor in the Pyrenees as they dodged Nazi patrols, and not in Franco’s Spain either. Slowly, oh so slowly, they had avoided capture as they made their way under a burning sun from the north to the south of Spain. In Gibraltar they boarded The Stirling Castle which, before the war, had been an ocean liner, but was now a troop ship sailing back and forth between Gibraltar and Southampton.

  Jack firmly pushed her up the steps and onto the next train.

  ‘Frome – Castle Cary – Langport – Taunton – Exeter,’ another station guard yelled.

  Florence had a splitting headache from the constant noise and wished she hadn’t been forced to leave France. This dreary worn-out England wasn’t the England she remembered. But it would have been unthinkable to stay in France. Unthinkable. Irrevocably altered by what had happened to her, she prayed that surely, surely she’d be safe here.

  They traipsed along the corridor for what seemed like an age then, thank God, Florence spied two seats and, stumbling over her own feet, she hastily claimed them. Once settled in the carriage, she leant her head back in relief. She would survive this, she told herself. She had survived much worse. And then she fell asleep, vaguely aware of the station stops and only opening her eyes properly when Jack shook her and told her they were almost there. She glanced out of the window as the train pulled into Exeter station and then came to a shuddering, screeching, stop. She spotted a poster with a head and shoulder image of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and a quote from him, too. ‘Let us go forward together’ it proclaimed. Yes, she thought. We all need to go forward, and she would just have to find a way to stop herself from looking back.

  She felt light-headed as she and Jack straightened up, then stood to stretch their legs and smooth down their crumpled clothes. Tired, hungry, filthy dirty, they were home.

  Home, she sighed. Where was that now? It was Jack’s home they were going to. They retrieved their bags from the luggage rack overhead, climbed down from the train and made their way out of the station.

  Forty minutes later as Jack’s father, Lionel, drove them downhill along a bumpy gravelled track, Florence caught her first glimpse of the Devonshire cottage. She gaped at it from the front passenger window, blinking rapidly and feeling she’d arrived in the borderlands between what was real and what was not. Thatched and tucked into a cosy space between green forested hills, it had surely grown out of the meadow that lay in front of it. A fairy-tale cottage. And, except for the suicidal scuttling pheasants attempting to escape the wheels it was completely silent. There could be no greater contrast between what they had been through than this and just the sight of it revived her.

  ‘A place to restore the heart and soul,’ Lionel said with a knowing look back at Jack as they drew closer. ‘Glad to see you safely back in Blighty, son.’

  ‘Two sides of the house are backed by hilly oak thickets,’ Jack said, on a more practical note. ‘A steep hill slopes down to the house on the third side and, as you can see, a brook and water meadow borders the approach. Magnificent walks in every direction.’

  ‘Like a sanctuary,’ Florence said, breathing properly for the first time in weeks. ‘And the hills standing guard.’

  ‘Hope it will be a sanctuary for you, my dear,’ Lionel said and coughed awkwardly, as if that might have been a bit too personal for a first meeting.

  Florence smiled at him.

  ‘Can’t drive across the brook in winter, mind. Have to park this side of it, but you can always cross by foot on the stone slabs over there when the water is flowing,’ he added. ‘Will be absolutely fine now though. Had a go at mowing the lawns myself, but the grass was too long and too thick. Needs a scythe, Jack.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen a more romantic place in my whole life,’ Florence said, glancing at the teeming wildflowers, the tangled rose bushes, and the clematis cascading over the front of the cottage. ‘Mind you, the climbers need a good pruning.’

  ‘Like to garden, do you, my dear?’ Jack’s father asked.

  He was tall and solidly built, a bear of a man with a full head of grizzly salt-and-pepper hair and ruddy cheeks. Probably a little too fond of a glass of port, she thought privately. She did her best to resist the image of her garden at home in France as it flashed into her mind and almost stopped her breath. She swallowed. ‘I adore gardening,’ she managed to say.

  ‘She’s something of an expert, Dad,’ Jack added.

  Lionel drove over the shallow brook and pulled up outside the cobbled pathway to the house, near a massive horse chestnut tree. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Meadowbrook. But for the farmer’s wife, you won’t see another soul. And the old boy up at the manor never comes down here.’

  ‘I love it,’ Florence said. ‘Thank you so much for driving us. Sorry we’re so filthy.’

  ‘Not at all. The house has been well aired and there are a few basic supplies. Bread, milk, bacon, and so on.’

  ‘Thanks Dad,’ Jack said and clapped his father on the back. ‘I don’t know about Florence, but more than anything I need to sleep.’

  Florence glanced down at the ingrained dirt in her nails. ‘Me too and tomorrow a bath.’

  Jack gave her a weary smile. ‘I think that can be arranged. Come on. Ready to go inside?’

  CHAPTER 2

  Devonshire, 1944

  The next morning

  How could she be the person she was before? She couldn’t, but still the past drew her back. All night, dreaming, Florence had longed to stumble upon a garden just like hers in the Dordogne. But it wasn’t a garden she found; in her dream it was a cemetery with her name carved on a headstone, paper roses strewn before it. Torn between worlds, in that hazy state before the day opened properly, her mind felt clouded, her heart unsettled, but then she heard water running over stones. From her bedroom window the evening before, she had spotted that the garden briefly dipped downwards, so the water was a little deeper there before it vanished under shrubs and bushes. Things became clear again. England, the early morning light here more fragile than it was at home, diffused. And then tapping. She heard someone tapping on her door. Barely able to remember the strange dream now, she heard Jack’s voice and rubbed the sleep from her eyes just as he poked his head around the door.

  ‘Sorry to disturb. You all right?’

  She pulled the sheets up to her chin, acutely aware she wasn’t wearing a nightdress. Last night, Jack had dug out a long-sleeved winceyette nightie that had once belonged to his grandmother, but she hadn’t liked to say how much she hated the horrible itchy thing.

  Jack ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled, and didn’t quite meet her eyes.

  ‘You didn’t disturb me,’ she said. ‘I was half awake.’

  ‘Good. I thought you might be hungry.’

  ‘Might be? I’m famished!’

  ‘There’s eggs and sausages from the farm next door and a fresh loaf.’

  She smiled. ‘Give me fifteen minutes. No, ten.’

  ‘Scrambled? Fried? Poached?’

  ‘Up to you.’

  ‘Good. Truth is, I can only really do fried.’

  She laughed as he left the room. Then she splashed her face and gave herself a quick flannel wash with water from the china jug and bowl on the marble-topped washstand.

  Then she put on the dressing gown Jack had given her and brushed her tangled blonde hair, tying it back in a low ponytail. She glanced in the small wall mirror, smiling at her own gunmetal grey-blue eyes, the ingrained dirt on her heart-shaped face and the annoying red spot on her chin. Too bad. She would have to do. Relief at being safe bubbled inside her and as she opened her bedroom door, she could smell the sausages frying in the kitchen. Mmmm. Delicious.

  She hurried down the narrow stairs. There was a brick-built outdoor bathroom, a sort of add-on affair, complete with a lavatory, a huge Belfast sink, and an old bath, but no electricity. At night you had to use a torch or a candle. You reached it via the scullery, so at least you didn’t have to go completely outside, and she dashed through before heading for the kitchen.