I let myself sleep in the next morning; each time I awoke I remembered Meg and daydreamed myself back to sleep. But midmorning Rosemary came in and informed me my carriage had arrived.
Hell’s gate. I lay on my back, hoping she would go away. Dust motes drifted through the air like tiny fairies. The room smelled of candle wax and musty tapestries and urine. This whole world smelled of urine.
“M’lady, Lord Winston’s man grows impatient.”
She didn’t go away, so I rolled out of bed and let her dress me. I packed a small bag and followed her to one of the palace’s side entrances.
Four shiny black horses, tossing their heads and snorting, stood before an elaborately detailed black coach. Holmes, Winston’s man, stood with the door open and a small stool that he placed on the ground when he saw me. The driver above murmured to the horses.
Holmes handed me in, then closed the door and climbed up beside the driver.
We were off.
Sadly, the coach’s shock absorbers didn’t match the elegance of the gold trim, so I nearly bit my tongue off half a dozen times. The coach smelled of wet feet and mildewed leather, so I spent the day with my face near the open window watching the countryside pass and thinking about Meg and how amazing it was that we’d found each other.
Holmes and I spent the first night in an inn, but the bedding in my room was so filthy I just lay on top rather than disrobe and crawl inside. Also, without help from someone, I couldn’t actually disrobe all the way. In the middle of the night, I was no longer able to push away the thoughts of tomorrow. I lay there, eyes wide open, terrified at what I was about to do and what it meant. Murder in the moment of passion or anger was horrible but at least understandable. You got carried away. But I was traveling sixty miles, quite a journey in 1560, in order to commit premeditated murder.
As I tried to sleep, I struggled with the reality/unreality thing. Was I really saving history or just playing out a little drama in my head while Blanche continued to ruin my life and be the ambitious, edgy chick Chris so desperately wanted?
Good thing I wasn’t bitter.
Winston hadn’t accompanied me, of course, in order to distance himself as much as possible and be visible around the palace when Amy’s death was announced. He and the other co-conspirators were, in fact, going hunting with Dudley and the Queen in one of the parks. Late the next morning, we passed through a town that Holmes announced as Abingdon, the last before our destination. I felt sick to my stomach.
Ten minutes later, we begin passing cornfields with orchards behind them. Well before we reached a small gatehouse, the driver drew the horses to a halt. The carriage rocked as Holmes descended and appeared at my window. “M’lady, we have arrived at Cumnor Place. My lord said not to announce your arrival but that you should approach the house on foot. I am to ride on and return in a short while.”
He helped both me and my dress fight our way out of the flimsy carriage. I straightened my skirts, hoping Holmes couldn’t hear my heart pounding. As far as he knew, I was here to extend an invitation to Amy from Robert Dudley to come to court. It was weak but the best I could come up with.
Holmes leapt back into his seat, the driver clicked to the horses, and I was left alone. The road at this point was quite wide, sloping away to shallow hills. Blue sky was dusted with little puffs of white, leaves rustled in the gentle breeze, and a late-blooming flower sweetened the air. It was far too perfect a day in which to kill someone.
I approached the gatehouse, feeling every pebble in the road through my thin soles, then passed under the slender arch. “Hello?” No one stepped out from the gatehouse, so I continued walking. Crows scolded me from the tops of the firs lining the drive. My senses were on alert for sounds of people or horses, anyone who might encounter me, since my excuse for visiting was so flimsy.
The servants would be gone, so all I had to do was walk into the house, find Amy, and push her down the stairs. Then history’s timeline would continue on as it should. Too bad I was shaking so hard I couldn’t walk a straight line.
And too bad that never, in one thousand years, would I push an ill, feeble woman down the stairs. In fact, I would never push anyone down any stairs. I needed a Plan B. I stopped in the middle of the road. Why was I even going to this house if I knew I couldn’t do it?
I took a few backward steps then turned and huffed my way back to where Holmes had left me. I searched in vain for some sign of the carriage, but I was alone. My lungs struggled against the stupid stomacher, which I hated even more than Lord Winston. I blew out a few massive breaths to calm myself. No, I was here. I needed to find Amy Dudley and help her somehow.
The edge of a white, square building came into view, then the entire building. The estate was an odd mix of differently styled buildings connected to one another, all covered in thick ivy. At one point in our plotting, Winston had mentioned Cumnor Place used to be a monastery taken over when Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII, changed the country’s religion and took possession of Catholic cathedrals and monasteries. That explained the pointed arches on all the doorways and windows.
Squaring my shoulders, I approached as if I had reason to be there. I walked through a wide arch in one corner and found myself standing in a huge courtyard. Grass had grown up through the cobblestones, enough that seven black-faced sheep grazed there. One looked up and bleated, but otherwise they ignored me.
Which building was Amy’s? Feeling faint, I rested my palms on my knees for a second. What the hell was I going to do? I retraced my steps out of the courtyard and looked for an entrance. A studded oak door with slender windows on each side seemed to be the main entrance, so I stepped up. Without knocking, I pushed open the heavy door, grateful it didn’t creak. I stood inside an airy vestibule, listening for any movement, any voices. Nothing.
I began walking through the rooms. To the right was a parlor of sorts, to the left a dining room. The home wasn’t elegant, but it was clean and filled with solid furniture. The stone floor shone in the sun. I was relieved that at least Dudley had ensured his wife lived in relative comfort.
When I reached the farthest room, one that looked out over a smallish lake, my legs refused to work anymore. Even though I had no idea what I would say should Amy Dudley appear, I sank into the nearest chair and squinted against the sunlight pouring through the leaded windows. A rock pathway lined with dense, trimmed boxwood led to a short dock, faded gray and listing to the left. An empty rowboat bobbed alongside the dock.
While I listened for any sound in the house, my brain spun. How could I kill Amy Dudley without really killing her? She had to disappear for about…I quickly did the math. Sir Robert Dudley would die of malaria and stomach cancer in 1688, so Amy needed to hide out for a mere twenty-eight years.
Hell’s gate, how would that even work? I stared at the lake. Okay, there it was, right in front of me. First, I would hide Amy in the woods, then wait for the servants to return. When they did, I would run toward them, crying that Amy had fallen into the lake. In the confusion I would slip away, retrieve Amy, and we’d walk to safety.
I clenched my jaw. What a fire trucking idiot. Amy was too ill to walk anywhere. And I couldn’t hide her until 1688. Once again without a Plan B, I rose and finished searching the main floor, ending up at a wide but shallow staircase. It rose for seven steps, turned ninety degrees, then rose another ten steps. God’s bones. This was the staircase. One Tudor fan website had described it in detail. How could someone die on such a short staircase? Surely Amy Dudley had been murdered, and that man could show up at any time.
Then I heard a floor creak upstairs. “Amy? Mrs. Dudley? Hello?”
Nothing.
Lifting my skirts, I ascended the stone steps and hesitated at the top. Had the sound come from the room at the top of the stairs? I knocked softly and let myself in. Clutching my chest, I struggled to calm down. The room was empty but for a tall-backed chair facing the open window. “Amy?” I took a few steps.
My pulse raced so fast that all sound faded. All I could hear was my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest. Calm down.
When I looked over the chair back, I blew out a huge breath. Nothing there but an embroidery hoop holding a silk handkerchief. Okay, Amy must be farther down the hallway.
I rubbed my face for courage, smoothed out my skirt, and stepped out of the sitting room onto the landing.
“Oh!” A painfully thin woman at the top of the stairs whirled around in surprise at my rustling skirts.
“Oh!” I echoed stupidly.
The startled woman took a step back.
“Don’t be frightened!” I reached toward her. “I mean no harm.” But she took another step back onto nothing, and began windmilling her arms.
“No!” I cried as she did two awkward backward somersaults, arms and legs flopping like a doll’s. She made no sound except for a soft moan and landed in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs.
No, no, no! I stared down at her for a second, willing her to move. She didn’t.
I scrambled down the steps. Judging by the fine dress, it had to be her. I knelt and felt her neck for a pulse. Nothing. I felt both wrists. Still nothing. I sank back onto the floor. How could someone die so incredibly fast? One second staring at me, the next second dead.
“Amy, Amy, I’m so sorry.” Her eyes were wide and unseeing. Hell’s gate. I’d killed her by mistake. I curled over, hugging myself. What had I done? Ensured history’s continuity? Or just killed a woman in my multiple-personality-induced fantasy? I squeezed my sides. I’d never seen a dead body before.
Shaken, I forced myself to stand and straighten poor Amy’s body out so she looked more dignified. I replaced the pale green headpiece that had come undone in her fall.
I wiped my eyes and looked around. No one else was here. Did that mean that Amy Dudley really had fallen by accident, that there was no murderer lurking in the house? (Except, of course, for me.) I took in the white vase of lilies on a nearby table, a heavy basket on the floor filled with fresh marigolds. The perfect blossoms were so plump and alive it hurt to look at them. Birds chirped outside. It did not escape me that I was the only witness to an event that would confuse and confound people for centuries.
Taking a shaky breath, I smoothed the hair back from Amy’s pale face, kissed her cooling forehead, then left Cumnor Place as quietly as I’d entered it.
I took two steps outside and threw up. When I was done gagging, I kicked the dirt to cover my mess, then looked back at the house. It would be demolished 250 years from now because Amy’s ghost would give the locals so much trouble.
Holmes and the carriage awaited me at the end of the drive. I climbed inside and cried for a long, long time.