January
Beaumont Island is the
largest of the two Bay Islands, 11 miles long and 8 miles wide, with a population of
around 3000, and was first settled by the Romans, who called it Saxa
Viridia, the green Rock, and built a fort on the hill above the harbour with a
commanding view across the open water and any approaching vessels that might
threaten the garrison on the mainland.
It was not a popular posting
for most of the soldiers because of the remoteness and the quiet, the remainder
liked it for the same reasons.
Following the formal end of the Roman occupation of
Britain at the beginning of the 5th Century AD, the islands were largely
unoccupied until the arrival of the Norman’s after their victory over King
Harold at Hastings, when a close friend of William of Normandy, a minor
nobleman, Gilbert du Beaumont, claimed the islands for himself, and took up
residence on the larger Island which he promptly named after himself.
The other island he named St
Giles du Cabot in honour of his cousin and childhood friend who died of his
wounds after the battle.
When Gilbert and his
entourage first set foot on the island only the wooden piles remained from the
old Roman Quayside, so the first task was to build a new one of stone along
with breakwaters, sea walls and tetrapods, until the port of St Pierre-Eglise was
born, so named as it was the birthplace of his wife Eleanor.
Work began in earnest on the
town once the port was fully functional, including a Manor House and a Norman
Church, unfortunately neither Gilbert nor his wife lived long enough to see St
Pierre completed, but they were both buried on the island.
The burden of completing the
work his parents had begun fell to their second son William, as his elder
brother Robert had gone to fight in the first crusade and never returned.
Robert was not the first
Beaumont son to fall in battle and he wouldn’t be the last, but the family
stewardship protected the land for over
900 years before war finally ended the family’s tenure when three successive
heirs were killed in action during the Great War and the accumulated death
duties forced George, the only surviving Beamont, to sell off the estate in
1920, auctioning off the buildings, the port and parcels of land.
Fortunately, the sale managed
to raise enough to pay off the taxman, while being able to keep Woodside Farm
for himself and retain a Beaumont family presence on the island.
However, this story begins 4,700 miles away from
the island where bestselling
crime fiction writer, Danny Nightingale, creator of the Fraser
Markham series, was in the USA on
a book signing tour, while simultaneously researching for a new book series he
had been promising his publisher, Max Parsons, for some time, with a new
protagonist Sharon Jacques.
At the age of twenty-eight,
to have had not one, but three bestsellers was some kind of achievement.
He had been in the states for
three months when he completed his tour and already had a clear outline
sketched out for his new book, so he was feeling good and looking forward to
returning to Downshire.
However, in January while he
was travelling through Colorado, Danny got caught in a snowstorm and crashed
his car into a snowbank.
He wasn’t badly hurt, but he
did have a wrist fracture, a couple of broken ribs, a mild concussion and
assorted cuts, bruises, and abrasions.
His hire car didn’t fare
quite so well and was a write off, so the car got towed and he ended up in the
ER.
While he was there, he called
his publisher who arranged to have him transferred, after his wrist was set,
via a private ambulance to a more exclusive hospital close to Colorado Springs
called High Pines, where he met Sir Avery Arnold
and his granddaughter Molly Barrington, a meeting which, although he didn’t
know it at the time, was to change his life forever.
He had been in the hospital
for three days before Danny arrived, but it was twenty-four hours later when he
was summoned for an audience.
It was Molly who first
spotted him as she was walking along the corridor past his room, no one else
seemed to realize who he was, so she began to doubt herself, so she walked
slowly past the door another five times until, she was sure.
Molly was a huge fan of his
books, but was far too shy to approach him herself, which was why Sir Avery
summoned him instead.
However, it wasn’t until his
fourth day at High Pines that he felt up to accepting the invitation from the
great man.
