The phone rang shrilly on the table beside Lizzie’s tablet. She blinked as it pulled her back to the moment. She didn’t really want to answer. She wanted to sit here and think, and enjoy the timeless peace of The High, which was starting to feel properly hers, her home, her place of belonging, her past but also her future.

The phone rang, on and on. She picked it up.

“Hello?” she said.

“Lizzie.” It was Johnny’s voice. “Lizzie, I’m back at Oakhangar Hall. Please will you come over? I need to talk to you.”

24

Amy: Cumnor Place, 8th September 1560

We had laid our plans very carefully for the day of my death. Anthony, having made all the arrangements, had absented himself from Cumnor. It was vital that no suspicions should attach to him for later he would be the man who identified the body as mine. Richard Varney, the most thuggish of my husband’s entourage, was the man who was providing a fresh corpse. Backstreet alley murders were of no consequence to him. Robert had already bought him out of prison twice for stabbing a man to death. If I had the slightest qualm for the poor woman whose fate would enable me to fulfil mine, I repressed it. I asked no questions of how she might meet her end in a manner that would fool any inquest jury. I did not want to know.

There was a fair in Abingdon that day. I gave the entire household permission to attend. More than that, I encouraged it, offering them some coin as an inducement. I thought that with money in their pockets, none would decline, but that was where I faced my first problem for two of Sir Anthony’s servants, Mrs Owen and Mrs Odingsells, refused to go. Mrs Owen was elderly and Mrs Odingsells pious and both were as awkward as two old women could be.

“No Christian woman should attend the fair on a Sunday,” Mrs Odingsells told me sharply. From the start she had resented my place in the household, usurping the authority and the status of her mistress, Sir Anthony’s wife. “Mrs Owen and I shall stay in the solar.”

“You may do as you wish,” I said with a shrug. I knew they would be playing at cards, which was as reprehensible as going to the fair. I would not argue though. There were more important matters to attend to.

I went to my chamber and started to pack my travelling bag, one case only, for I needed to travel quick and light. That was why I did not see her when first she came; I was too preoccupied in choosing between two pairs of gloves, which to take, which to leave behind. It was such a quandary.

She slid into the room like a snake, silent, a darker shadow against the darkness of the day. It was only when I turned to throw Robert’s letters on the fire, to remove all trace of our plan that the flames leaped up and it was their flare of light that illuminated my sister Anna’s figure against the white wall.