She saw again the picture from the Embankment. Johnny had been beside her. She had touched the stone and inadvertently called up the vision of the old palace, and then Johnny was gone. She could hear Arthur telling her that his brother had a habit of disappearing, and behind that was the memory of something that Dudley had said; something about Johnny vanishing practically in front of his eyes. She’d assumed it was a figure of speech—but perhaps it was not.

Lizzie pressed her forehead to the glass and closed her eyes. She remembered Johnny talking about Amelia’s death, the desperation in his voice and the pain:

“Millie’s death hurts like hell on Earth. I’d do anything to bring her back, anything I could.”

When she’d picked up Johnny’s green notebook, she had felt the echo of those same emotions from him. She closed her eyes, trying to conjure once more the sense she had when she had held the notebook in her hand. She needed to speak to Arthur, needed the notebook back. All the clues would be in there, she was sure, and if she held it again, she would know.

She bent to pick up the book about Amy Robsart. She thought about Avery telling her that there was a curse on the Robsart family that had repeated down the years for centuries, a curse that had now claimed Amelia. If Johnny wanted to break that curse would he stop at nothing to do it? Would he go back in time to try to save Amelia? Or would he need to go back further still, to a palace that had been built hundreds of years before, to find Amy Robsart and save her in order to stop the whole pattern from repeating down through time?

Lizzie turned the idea over in her mind very carefully, half afraid that she was losing her own sanity. No one could ever believe such an irrational theory. She acknowledged it. If psychometry sounded fanciful, time travel was surely impossible, utter madness. Yet Johnny had vanished without trace; Johnny, who was psychic, who had a habit of disappearing at will, who wanted to save his sister’s life.

Lizzie knew she was right. She sensed it.

She also had no idea how to find Johnny and she knew she had even less chance of bringing him back.

20

Amy: Melford Hall, Suffolk, May 1559

It was a long journey from Throcking into Suffolk, further than I had gone to carry Robert’s messages to the Princess Elizabeth in Hatfield, further than I had travelled alone before. I say alone, but of course I was not; I had a maid with me and a groom and I had the escort of William Hyde himself. He had little choice but to fall in with my plans, not when I had told him that I knew he was robbing my lord of sums of money considerably larger than those I stole myself.

William had been quite unable to believe me when I had told him that if he did not accommodate my plans, I would tell Robert about his dealings. He had goggled at me as though the curtains themselves had spoken, so accustomed was he to thinking I was of no account. Although at first, he had laughed.