The Forgotten Sister

by Nicola Cornick

  ‘We walked down to the river,’ Lizzie said. ‘Johnny asked if I’d mind going with him to the tube. He wanted to show me the plaque that commemorated the fact that this was once the site of a palace called Baynard’s Castle. He’d mentioned it earlier in the evening and seemed really into the idea that these flats were built on the site of an old palace.’

  ‘That’s Johnny,’ Arthur said ruefully. ‘He’s hooked on history.’

  ‘Yeah, the notebook is full of dates and stuff,’ Lizzie said. ‘That much I did notice. Anyway, we went down to the embankment and Johnny showed me the plaque and stupidly I touched it.’ She stopped. ‘It’s weird,’ she said slowly, ‘but normally the psychometry only works when I want it to. I mean, I have to deliberately open my mind up to the possibility of reading an object. I touched the plaque without really thinking. I wasn’t expecting anything to happen.’

  ‘And something did,’ Arthur said.

  ‘There was nothing, at first,’ Lizzie said. ‘Then everything changed and it felt as though I was actually there in the past, and I could see the castle, and smell the river and feel the sun on me as though it was real…’ She gave a convulsive shudder. ‘Then I blacked out.’

  ‘And came around to find that Johnny had done a runner and you’d drawn a crowd,’ Arthur finished drily.

  ‘That’s about right,’ Lizzie said slowly. ‘I don’t know when Johnny left me, or why. Perhaps he was scared by what happened.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Arthur said. ‘We both know Johnny is much more comfortable with this paranormal stuff than either of us.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Lizzie was remembering Johnny telling her how cool it was that she had psychometric powers and that she shouldn’t be afraid of them. ‘Perhaps I was right then to think that he’d been playing me all evening,’ she said, ‘and he was just waiting for a chance to slip away.’

  ‘He’d hardly ask you to go with him then, would he?’ Arthur pointed out. He sighed. ‘I feel as though we’re missing something here.’

  The insistent buzz of a text interrupted them again and with a muffled curse Arthur reached for his phone. ‘Anna’s managed to see Dudley,’ he said. ‘She says Dudley denies seeing Johnny for several days.’ He scrubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Shit,’ he said. He looked up at Lizzie. ‘Apparently the police are on their way over here to see you. Anna says they’ve hinted at new evidence but won’t say what it is.’

  Lizzie’s stomach dropped. Memories rose of the last time she’d been questioned, the doubts, suspicions and endless questions, the sense of isolation and fear. She’d done nothing wrong and yet she already felt guilty, off-balance and scared. She could feel herself shaking, shrinking in on herself as she had as a child for protection and self-reliance. Trust no one. Rely on no one. Once upon a time she had thought she could trust Dudley but that had been an illusion. She’d just started to forge some trust with Arthur and this had blown it apart already.

  Her own phone pinged with a text – Bill, telling her that he was sending the same legal team over to Blackfriars that she’d used before. It seemed everyone knew before she did that she was about to be arrested.

  ‘The police will be here soon then,’ she said, as steadily as she could. ‘Good luck, Arthur. I hope you find Johnny soon.’ She smiled. ‘Not just for my sake.’

  The entry phone buzzed sharply, several times, and Lizzie went to answer. She just wanted to get this over with.

  The hall was awash with people: two women in suits with briefcases, several bodyguards, uniformed police officers, Kat, wearing Chanel and a distraught expression, and Bill, talking urgently on his mobile, apparently to a national newspaper. ‘Dudley Lester has already been taken in for questioning,’ Lizzie heard him say. ‘Bishopsgate police station…’

  PC Morgan stepped forward and started to speak. There was a buzzing in Lizzie’s ears; she felt time slow down.

  ‘Ms Kingdom, we would like to ask you some more questions in connection with the death of Mrs Lester and the disappearance of John Robsart. I’m asking you to accompany us to the police station.’

  ‘Are you arresting me?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Not unless you refuse to come with us.’ PC Morgan smiled thinly.

  ‘Dudley’s under arrest,’ Kat said, helpfully. ‘He refused to go.’

  That didn’t surprise Lizzie at all. Trust Dudley to turn the whole thing into a drama. Not that Bill was any better. She could see he was still on his phone.

  ‘We’d like to search your flat as well,’ PC Morgan said.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Lizzie said. ‘I just need to get my bag.’ She turned to Kat. ‘It’s really kind of you, Kat,’ she said, ‘but I don’t need either Bill or you to come with me.’

  ‘Sweetie!’ Kat’s face crumpled. She smoothed the Chanel skirt. ‘Of course you need us. I know we had a tiff but this is really important.’

  ‘I know it is,’ Lizzie said. ‘That’s why I’ll manage on my own. But thank you anyway.’

  There was a movement behind her. She spun around.

  ‘Lizzie,’ Arthur said.

  She turned to look at him. ‘I’d never do anything to hurt Johnny,’ she said, and despite the crowd of people around them she spoke to him alone and let the defences in her mind fall hoping that somehow, he could read through to her heart the way she could read him.

  ‘I know,’ Arthur said.

  And then they took her away.

  Chapter 16

  Amy: Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Summer 1557

  I had grown up in the country and learned to ride as a child, but it was typical of Robert’s attitude towards me that whenever we had travelled, I had either been transported by litter or been given the least challenging of horses to ride. Indeed, some of them had seemed so docile that it was difficult to encourage them to move at all. Robert loved to hunt but had seldom encouraged me to accompany him. In the beginning I had fondly interpreted this as a sign of his care for me; I felt like a china doll, so proud to be cosseted. Later I came to realise that it was merely another sign of Robert’s contempt for me. He had never asked if I could ride well and assumed that I could not.

  William Hyde, whose care I had been consigned to whilst Robert was out of the country with King Philip, had evidently been given the same instruction for he wrapped me about with so much caution and coddling that a vain woman would believe herself highly prized.

  ‘We must take care of you as well as Sir Robert would do,’ he would declare roguishly when I expressed a desire to take the air and he refused to allow it. ‘You cannot go out at present, there is too chill a wind.’ In such small ways he made my life a misery.

  Today was different, however. Today I had been allowed out – under the strict supervision of Mr Hyde’s grooms – because Robert had an important commission for me to fulfil, and as I reined in my horse on the rising land above Hatfield House, I felt the smallest frisson of pleasure to be out in the world.

  The Princess Elizabeth’s house was considered a palace but even I could see the irony in that. She might have been happy there as a child, sharing her brother’s education, but now the brick walls were her prison. Queen Mary knew that her sister was as unscrupulous as a usurer and as sly as a fox. The Queen had set her under lock and key here, and I admired her for it.

  My move from the court in London to Throcking in Hertfordshire now made a great deal of sense. As I had thought, it was nothing to do with me, and all to do with the Princess Elizabeth. Robert wanted me to be close by her so I could run the errands to her that he could not. Had he shown me but an ounce of the unswerving devotion he had for her I would have laid down my life for him. Yet that was as nothing to him. He could not even see me when Elizabeth was in his mind, for she eclipsed all else as the sun eclipses the moon. Robert was dazzled, blinded. He had to be to take such risks when his position under Queen Mary was so precarious.

  The groom knocked vigorously at the door and I shivered for we were deep in shadow here. The tall brick gables of th
e hall loomed high over us. A black-clad servant showed me into the hall and left me for an age seated on a horribly uncomfortable wooden chair; I believe they wanted me gone. However, I had a commission and I was engaged upon it. I waited.

  Eventually one of the Elizabeth’s ladies, also in black, swept me up and carried me away to a little panelled ante-chamber. She was impatient. She had no time for this.

  ‘You can give Sir Robert’s message to me,’ she said to me, holding out her hand imperatively. ‘I will see that it reaches the Lady Elizabeth.’

  I had been expecting this. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ I said, with a respectful curtsey to soften the refusal, ‘but Sir Robert insisted I hand it to none other than her highness herself.’

  My choice of address for the Princess did not go unnoticed, just as I had intended. Here in this house, loyalties were split like shards of glass. Some of the Princess’s ladies spied for the Queen. Others were dedicated to her service. This woman, Lady Vane, I knew to be one of the latter for her mother had been a friend to Queen Anne Boleyn.

  I saw the expression shift in Lady Vane’s eyes and her manner thawed a very little.

  ‘Sir Robert’s devotion to Her Highness has always been appreciated,’ she said.

  ‘He is indeed most devoted,’ I agreed smoothly. ‘No one could be more loyal to her.’

  The truth of my words mocked me. What other man would send his wife with a message to the woman he loved?

  I waited. After a moment Lady Vane had come to her decision. She nodded. ‘Follow me,’ she said.

  I had travelled over twenty miles from Throcking to Hatfield in order to deliver Robert’s gift to the Lady Elizabeth but those last few steps through the shabby old house were the most difficult for I hated her so much. In my imagination I had turned her into a monster. My heart was thumping so hard I thought my steps would falter. Yet when I walked into the library and saw her sitting at the octagonal table, her head bent over her book in the prettiest pose imaginable, my first sensation was disappointment rather than anything else.

  She is but a woman like me.

  I had seen her before, of course, but I realised that in my jealousy I had built her up to be more than she truly was. After all, she was my own age, and less beautiful than I, and her history was mired in scandal. What was there here to fear? What was there to hate?

  A moment later I knew the answer, for she looked up, haloed in a sunlight that turned her hair to spun copper and gold. She was dazzling, radiant, not simply to my eyes but somehow to my soul as well. I saw her and recognised her worth. Robert had been right; Elizabeth was special. She burned with a spark few could ever match, certainly not the Queen, her embittered husk of a sister. Elizabeth was everything that Mary was not, charming, clever as a scholar, demure as a milkmaid, cunning as a thief. Had she not been all of those things and more she would have been dead before now.

  As she put the book aside and stood to greet me, I felt the same frisson of antagonism that always stung me in her presence. I felt at a disadvantage in so many ways. I might be beautiful but she was dazzling, faceted like a jewel where I was dull and simple. The hanging cupboards of books that surrounded us only served to emphasise my own lack of learning and made me feel slow and stupid.

  ‘Your Highness.’ I inclined my head in the briefest of acknowledgements.

  ‘Lady Dudley.’ I could read nothing from her tone. She did not ask how I was. She said nothing to ease my discomfort.

  ‘I bring a gift from my lord, madam,’ I said. I opened my leather satchel and took out a book, the cover finely tooled in deep red leather, lettered in gold. It was a gift that typified Robert, extravagant, showy, proclaiming a wealth and importance he longed for but did not possess. I placed the book on the table next to the one she had been reading and as I did so we all heard the clink of coin from the hollowed-out compartment within. Lady Vane’s eyes widened but Elizabeth showed no surprise.

  ‘Robert assures you of his steadfast loyalty,’ I said.

  Elizabeth nodded slowly. Her gaze was on the book, not on me. She ran her fingers gently over its smooth surface. ‘Thank you. Sir Robert is a dear friend and generous when he has so little himself.’

  I swallowed the retort that Robert – and I – would have a great deal more if he were not given to such extravagant gestures. Bitterness consumed me as I remembered the hopes I had nourished when the money and Robert’s letter had first arrived. Mr Hyde had called me into his study and I had seen the gold and thought for one brief dizzy moment that it might be for me, that I might buy myself a new gown, or indeed several.

  ‘Does Sir Robert plan to visit us?’ I had asked Hyde, hating myself for the pleading tone in my voice. But he had shaken his head and looked at me pityingly and then I had realised that I was the one who was giving away my inheritance to the Princess Elizabeth for this money had surely come from the sale of some of my Norfolk estates.

  ‘Has Sir Robert returned from Picardy now?’ The Princess was addressing me directly. She did not invite me to sit, or offer refreshment. This, then, would be a very brief exchange.

  ‘Yes, Your Highness,’ I said.

  I saw the glimmer of amusement in her eyes as she waited for me to elaborate and I stolidly refused. I might have appeared churlish but in truth I knew very little news to pass on to her. After a cursory enquiry into my health, Robert’s letter had told me only that his brother Henry had been killed in battle, blown to bits by a cannonball before his very eyes. He and King Philip had returned to court and he would be lodged for a time in London. He made no suggestion that I should join him. Instead he had gone on to exhort me to deliver the coin to Elizabeth at Hatfield with all protestations of his love and loyalty. That had been the sum total of his correspondence.

  ‘Please convey my thanks to Sir Robert,’ Elizabeth said and my mind jerked away from Robert’s neglect and the new blue gown that was not to be mine and I looked up to meet her mocking brown eyes. ‘And thank you, Lady Dudley,’ she added. ‘I admire your obedience to your husband in what I imagine to be an onerous duty.’

  My temper caught at that. It was mean-spirited of her to make fun of me simply because she could. There was a moment when I tried to hold my tongue, but my outburst had been a long time building and now it was unstoppable.

  ‘Why?’ I burst out. ‘Why must you have Robert, of all men? You, who could have any man!’

  She did not answer immediately. Instead she ran her hands over the book’s cover again, like a lover’s caress.

  ‘I love Robert,’ she said simply, after a moment. ‘I always have.’

  Rage caught in my throat. ‘You will never have him,’ I said. ‘I shall make sure of that.’

  I heard the lady in waiting gasp at my words but Elizabeth did not look shocked. She stood illuminated by the sun, cloaked by books and learning, so far above me in so many ways.

  ‘You mistake me, Lady Dudley,’ she said, ‘I have far grander plans than to be any man’s wife.’ She said the word as though it had a bitter taste. ‘Even less,’ she added disdainfully, ‘would I be a mistress.’

  I saw my mistake. I had judged her according to the conventional fate of women down the ages, defined as I was, as even the Queen was, by men: daughter, wife, mother. Yet that was to underestimate her. The Princess Elizabeth valued herself high. She would not wed if it meant her life would be dictated by a husband. One day, if she continued to be clever and lucky and walked the tightrope and did not fall, she might be Queen of England and I could not imagine this imperious creature sharing her power with any man. I saw her ambition and I marvelled at it.

  Queen Elizabeth. She would stand alone, above them all. There was many a slip in the world of politics and high treason but somehow, I knew she would achieve it.

  It was then that I foresaw Robert’s downfall too with the certainty that comes from knowing someone inside and out. Robert was ruthlessly ambitious. When Elizabeth’s star rose, he would want his to rise too, higher and ever high
er, the equal of hers. Yet that would never happen. Her ambition would always outstrip his, her life would always run ahead of his, and though he would try, he would never be able to catch her.

  Robert Dudley and Elizabeth Tudor… Yes, they did love one another. I could see that. They needed the other to exist. Yet they were also the other’s torment.

  If I wanted to profit from that I needed to play them at their own games. I had been too small in my thinking, too unambitious. I needed to take Robert’s vaulting ambition and use it to my own ends.

  I laughed aloud, for the revelation filled me with a lightness of spirit. It was so long since I had felt joy but now it bubbled up in me like water from a fountain. I swept the Princess Elizabeth a low curtsey.

  ‘Thank you, Your Highness,’ I said. ‘I am indebted to you. I do believe you have shown me the road ahead.’

  It was the first and only time I saw Elizabeth discomfited. Her gaze narrowed on me as though she was afraid that she had somehow given away more than she had intended, and for a brief second I saw that this girl, so well defended, so drilled to carefulness by a lifetime of danger, existed on the knife’s edge of fear the entire time. That was sweet revenge.

  ‘Good day, Your Highness,’ I said. ‘Fare you well.’ And I left her in her prison with the money and Robert’s promise of devotion.

  It was hot outside. The sun beat down from a relentlessly blue sky. My docile mare had no desire to work and picked her way with agonising slowness along the track toward Throcking, her ears flicking irritably to ward off the flies. Mr Hyde’s grooms took out their frustrations at being obliged to nursemaid me by knocking the heads of the tall-growing dandelions beside our path. I was the only one who was wholly content that afternoon. I rode in a daze, my mind far away as I thought and planned.