The Forgotten Sister. Nicola Cornick

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       Acknowledgements

       Extract

       About the Publisher

Prologue

       Amy Robsart, Cumnor Village

      They came for me one night in the winter of 1752 when the ice was on the pond and the trees bowed under the weight of the hoar frost. There were nine priests out of Oxford, garbed all in white with tapers in hand. Some looked fearful, others burned with a righteous fervour because they thought they were doing the Lord’s work. All of them looked cold, huddled within their cassocks, the one out ahead gripping the golden crucifix as though it were all that stood between him and the devil himself.

      The villagers came out to watch for a while, standing around in uneasy groups, their breath like smoke on the night air, then the lure of the warm alehouse called them back and they went eagerly, talking of uneasy ghosts and the folly of the holy men in thinking they could trap my spirit.

      The hunt was long. I ran through the lost passageways of Cumnor Hall with the priests snapping at my heels and in the end, exhausted and vanquished, my ghost sank into the dark pool. They said their prayers over me and returned to their cloisters and believed the haunting to be at an end.

      Yet an unquiet ghost is not so easily laid to rest. They had trapped my wandering spirit but I was not at peace. When the truth is concealed the pattern will repeat. The first victim was Amyas Latimer, the poor boy who fell to his death from the tower of the church where my body was buried. Then there was the little serving girl, Amethyst Green, who tumbled from the roof of Oakhangar Hall. Soon there will be another. If no one prevents it, I know there will be a fourth death and a fifth, and on into an endless future, the same pattern, yet different each time, a shifting magic lantern projecting the horror of that day centuries ago.

      There is only one hope.

      I sense her presence beside me through the dark. Each time it happens she is there too, in a different guise, like me. She is my nemesis, the arch enemy. Yet she is the only one who can free me and break this curse. In the end it all depends on her and in freeing my spirit I sense she will also free her own.

      Elizabeth.

      I met her only a handful of times in my life. She was little but she was fierce, always, fierce enough to survive against the odds, a fighter, clever, ruthless, destined always to be alone. We could never have been friends yet we are locked together in this endless dance through time.

      I possessed the one thing she wanted and could not have and in my dying I denied it to her for ever. For a little while I thought that would be enough to satisfy me. Yet revenge sours and diminishes through the years. All I wish now is to be released from my pain and to ensure this can never happen again.

      Elizabeth, my enemy, you are the only one who can help me now but to do that you must change, you must see that the truth needs to be told. Open your eyes. Find the light.

Chapter 1

       Lizzie: Amelia and Dudley’s Wedding, 2010

      Everyone was drunk. They had broken into the wedding favour boxes early and were downing champagne directly from the quarter-bottles, lobbing chocolates at each other and throwing the be-ribboned scented teabags into the swimming pool. Amelia, the bride, who had personally chosen the Rose Pouchong and Green Jasmine teabags to match the scented candles, had stormed off in tears. Dudley, instead of going after his new wife, had jumped fully clothed into the pool, laughing maniacally.

      Lizzie thought boy bands were the pits, especially Dudley’s band, Call Back Summer, whom she secretly believed were just talentless entitled rich boys. She would never say that to Dudley, of course. He was her friend. But she wrote and played her own music and before they’d split up, her band had been way more successful than Dudley’s.

      Lizzie didn’t drink. She hated it when Dudley behaved like her father, ringing her up when he was pissed, slurring his words as he told her she was his best friend in the world, that he’d love her for ever. It was only because they’d known each other since the age of six that she put up with it. She had no idea why he had married Amelia anyway unless it was for publicity. He’d said he was in love but Dudley was always falling in love with someone. It was a stupid idea to get married when you were only eighteen. Lizzie didn’t intend to marry anyone, ever.

      She stood up, unpleasantly aware of the sweat sliding down her back and turning her lace mini dress transparent as it stuck to her skin. Kat, her godmother, had told her it was bad taste to wear a white dress to a wedding but Lizzie hadn’t cared. The June sun was dropping towards the horizon now and the marquee cast long shadows across the lawn. Not a breath of wind stirred the sultry air. A band was playing on the terrace but no one was paying any attention. Lizzie knew the partying would carry on long into the night. Dudley seemed to have an inexhaustible capacity for drink and drugs but she was bored.

      Stepping out from beneath the jaunty poolside umbrella, she was hit by the full heat of the day. She hated being too hot; it didn’t agree with her redhead’s pale, freckled skin. Suddenly the water looked very tempting. Dudley, seeing her hesitate on the edge of the pool, waved a soaking arm in her direction.

      ‘Lizzie!’ he shouted. ‘Come on in!’ Beside him a number of girls splashed around, screaming. One was Amelia’s younger sister Anna, who had jumped in wearing her bridesmaid’s dress. Another was Letty Knollys, the girlfriend of one of Dudley’s bandmates whom Lizzie privately thought was an even bigger groupie than Amelia.

      Lizzie smiled and shook her head. Her curls would go even frizzier if she got them wet and there were bound to be paparazzi hiding in the trees to capture the wedding reception for the papers. Dudley would have made sure of that. She didn’t want to be all over the red tops with mad hair and a wet see-through dress. She was too careful of her reputation for that.

      She wandered off in the direction of the luxury portaloos. Evidently the plumbing at Oakhangar Hall, the ridiculously ostentatious wedding present that Amelia’s father had bought for the bride, was not up to coping with two hundred celebrity guests. Nevertheless, the cool darkness of the entrance hall beckoned to her.

      It took her eyes several seconds to adjust when she took off her sunglasses and then she almost fell over the enormous pile of wedding presents spilling across the floor. Beyond the gift mountain the flagstones stretched, smooth and highly polished, to the base of a grand staircase that curved up in two flights to a balustraded gallery. The soaring walls were panelled in dark wood and hung with tapestries. The whole effect was consciously mock-medieval and rather over the top but Lizzie could see that it suited Amelia’s Pre-Raphaelite style.

      A huge black grand piano skulked in a corner beside the stair, its surface playing host to a vast display of lilies more suited to a funeral than a wedding in Lizzie’s opinion. She muffled a sneeze as the pollen tickled her nose. In contrast to the roar of the party outside, the house was sepulchrally quiet. Except… Across the wide acreage of floor came the cascading melody of a harp, the notes resonating for a couple of seconds then dying away.

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