Voices carried to her on the morning air. “Robbie! Wait for me!”

A man, woman and child were walking through the neatly planted orchard that clothed the hillside away to her left. The child was barely more than a baby in a stiff formal gown, waddling on tiny but sturdy legs, grasping after flowers, blades of grass and anything else that caught his attention. It was the woman who had called out to him; she walked beside him in the plain gown and white cap of an old-fashioned nanny, laughing as she bent toward him, encouraging him on, waiting to catch him if he tumbled over.

The man walked a little way apart, dark head bent as though deep in thought. Something about the droop of his shoulders and his abstracted air suggested grief, as did the rich black velvet of his attire. Like her, he was wearing strangely antiquated clothes, doublet and hose she knew they were called; she had played in sufficient operas to know the historical fashions.

At one point the man looked up, directly at Lucy, and she felt an odd lift of excitement, her heart beating a little faster, as though she knew him. She raised a hand instinctively to wave to him, yet he looked through her and past her, and continued on his way as though she were not there...

She wanted to call out to him:

“Robert! I’m here! It’s Catherine...” But no words came to her and he passed by, leaving her with the same ache in her heart she had felt earlier, bereft and alone.

Lucy woke abruptly, pulled from the dream by an unfamiliar sound, the call of a tawny owl so close by that it felt as though it was in the room with her. The name Catherine was echoing through her mind, but then the owl called again and she shifted from the dream to the present reality, and the fact that she was sprawled across the big double bed at Gunpowder Barn. A thin moon was shining through the skylight directly onto her face. Apart from the owl, quiet now, the night was silent. Briefly she thought about getting up and pulling the blind across the window, maybe even taking the bath she should have taken earlier when she arrived. But she still felt tired and the bed was so comfortable. It was only a moment before she was asleep again.

Two

Anne Catesby

Ashby St. Ledgers, Northamptonshire
November, 1592

“We need to speak about Robert.”

I opened the door of William’s study without knocking and saw him scramble to cover whatever it was he had been poring over at his desk. I suspected it was the household accounts; my husband knew that I tallied every last penny correctly, yet he always had to check my calculations. In more than twenty years of marriage he had never found a mistake yet that would not stop him. I ignored the furtive gesture and pinned on a smile.