The Last Daughter

by Nicola Cornick

  Heartfelt thanks to all the bloggers, librarians and booksellers who continue to support and promote my work and the biggest thank you of all to the readers who have chosen to step back in time with my books. I hope you enjoy your time travels!

  Love and thanks as always to my husband Andrew and to my family and friends, who have been amazing through difficult times, and thank you to Angus and April who in true Labrador fashion have carried on as happily as ever as long as food, walks and cuddles are forthcoming.

  Read on for an extract from Nicola Cornick’s stunning historical mystery, The Forgotten Sister

  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.

  Lizzie spun around. There was no sign of a harp, no sign of any instrument other than the piano. The cadence came again, higher, wistful, a fall of notes that sounded like a sigh. She moved towards the sound and then she saw it, on a little shelf to the right of the door, a crystal ball held in the cupped palms of a stone angel.

  The crystal swirled with a milky white mist.

  Touch me.

  Lizzie stopped when her hand was about an inch from the crystal surface.

  No. The urge was strong but she kne
w what would happen if she did. Ever since she had been a small child, she had had an uncanny knack of being able to read objects. It was something she had grown up with so at first it had seemed natural; it was only when she had first mentioned it to Kat, who had looked at her as though she was a changeling, that she realised not everyone had the gift. ‘It’s just your imagination running away with you,’ Kat had said, folding her in her embrace and stroking her hair, trying to soothe and normalise her, to reassure herself as much as Lizzie. ‘You see things because you want to see them, sweetie. It doesn’t mean anything…’

  Lizzie had never mentioned it to her again after that but she had known Kat was wrong. Later, when she looked it up, she saw it was called psychometry. She used it carefully, secretly, to connect with her past and the mother she had lost as a child. The rest of the time she tried not to touch anything much at all if it was likely to give her a vision. She really didn’t want to know.

  The crystal was calling to her. She rubbed her palms down her dress to stop herself reaching out to obey the unspoken whisper.

  ‘What did you see?’

  Lizzie jumped. A boy was standing on the bottom step of the vast staircase, dwarfed by its height and breadth. He was staring at her. It was disconcerting; she hadn’t known anyone was there.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t touch it.’ She sounded defensive, which was ridiculous. She’d done nothing wrong and he was only a child. Deliberately she relaxed her face into the smile she used for the public.

  ‘Hi, I’m Lizzie.’

  The boy looked at her as though he was trying to make some sort of private decision about her. It was an odd expression for such a young child; wary, thoughtful with a flash of calculation. It hinted, Lizzie thought, at a rather terrifying intelligence.

  ‘I’m Johnny.’ He came forward and stuck out a hand very formally. Lizzie shook it.

  ‘You’re Amelia’s brother. I saw you at the wedding.’ She recognised him now from the church, traipsing in behind the flower girls in Amelia’s wake, looking as though he’d rather be somewhere else. Amelia’s family had turned out in force for the wedding. They were all very close, a situation which Lizzie secretly envied.

  ‘They made me be a page boy.’ Johnny sounded disgusted. He looked down at his miniature three-piece suit with loathing. Lizzie could hardly blame him. It was horribly twee. ‘I hated it,’ he said. ‘I’m six years old, not a baby.’

  Lizzie smothered another smile. ‘Life lesson, Johnny. People are always trying to make you do stuff you don’t want to do. You have to stand up for your rights.’

  ‘Arthur says sometimes you have to do what other people want to make them happy,’ Johnny said.

  ‘That’s true,’ Lizzie acknowledged. She wasn’t great at putting other people’s happiness first. She’d had to struggle too hard for her own. She thought Arthur, whoever he was, sounded a proper goody-goody. ‘It’s complicated,’ she said. ‘Next time, though, ask Arthur whether he’d like to be a page boy instead of you.’

  Johnny giggled. ‘Arthur’s too big to do that.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Did you really see nothing in the crystal?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ Lizzie said lightly. She remembered now that Amelia liked all the flaky stuff, though with the amount of drugs she and Dudley took sometimes they didn’t need a crystal ball to see things. Lizzie didn’t do drugs. She’d grown up seeing her father offer Ecstasy to his dinner guests along with coffee and mints. No thank you.

  ‘The crystal called to you,’ Johnny said. ‘I heard it.’

  OK, so he was an odd child, Lizzie thought, but then so had she been. She felt a tug of affinity with him.

  ‘I thought I heard a harp playing,’ she said, ‘but it must have been the wind. That must have been the sound you heard too.’

  ‘There’s no wind today,’ Johnny said.

  ‘Then it must have been the band,’ Lizzie said.

  She saw Johnny watching her with those bright blue eyes and thought, He knows. He knows I’m lying. How can he? He’s only six.

  ‘Amelia says that the crystal speaks to her,’ Johnny said seriously. ‘Maybe that’s what you heard. She says it has healing powers.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Lizzie said, wondering how many more of Amelia’s new age philosophies her little brother had absorbed. Not that she could criticise. She might not like possessing woo-woo powers but she could hardly deny they existed.

  ‘Johnny?’

  This time they both jumped. A man was crossing the hall towards them, young, tall, unmistakably related to Johnny with the same lean features and dark blue eyes. Where Johnny had ruffled blond hair, this man’s hair, however, was black, and unlike Johnny he looked good in a morning suit. Lizzie thought he also looked familiar and wondered if they had met before. There had been such a crowd in the church, and she knew so many people, but she couldn’t quite place him. Perhaps she’d seen him on a billboard; he looked like a model.

  His gaze focused on her and Lizzie saw that he recognised her and, a second later, saw equally clearly, that he did not like her. It was a novel experience for her to be disliked. She worked hard to be sweet and appealing. There was no reason to dislike her.

  ‘Hi, Arthur,’ Johnny said. ‘This is Lizzie.’

  ‘I know,’ Arthur said.

  Arthur Robsart, Lizzie thought, of course. He was not a model but he did do something on TV, not that she ever had time to watch, and he had some impossibly glamorous fiancée who wasn’t at the wedding because she was about to make it in Hollywood. He was also Amelia’s older brother, or half-brother, she thought – Amelia’s family was almost as complicated as hers – which, she supposed, explained his dislike for her. Her heart dropped a little. She’d tried to be nice to Amelia; after all, she was Dudley’s oldest friend so she should be Amelia’s friend too. But somehow it hadn’t worked and evidently Arthur knew that and like some other mean people, thought she should get out of Dudley’s life.

  Johnny scrambled up from the step and held out his arms unselfconsciously to his brother, asking to be picked up. Arthur’s face lightened into a transforming smile.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked, ruffling Johnny’s hair. ‘Your mum’s looking for you.’

  ‘I want to get out of this stupid outfit,’ Johnny grumbled, fretful as any ordinary six-year-old now.

  ‘Come on then.’ Arthur swung him up onto his shoulders. ‘Let’s go and get changed.’ He gave Lizzie a cool nod, nothing more. Her heart dropped a little further, which was weird since his dislike mattered not at all. She was seventeen years old and she’d already learned not to care about other people’s opinions. She’d also learned not to get entangled with handsome men. Or any men, for that matter; the life lessons she’d already absorbed would probably make even a psychiatrist wince.

  As Arthur’s footsteps died away, silence washed back into the hall and with it the plaintive echo of the crystal’s song. Unwilling but unable to resist, Lizzie moved back towards it. The glass had turned a pale violet colour now. It seemed too beautiful not to touch. And surely something so beautiful couldn’t be dangerous.

  Her fingertips brushed the surface of the ball. It felt cool and smooth, the drifts of mist within following the movement of her hand. Immediately Lizzie saw a vision of the crystal sitting in the window of a shop in Glastonbury surrounded by a whole variety of other bogus magical items from joss sticks to druids’ robes. She could see Amelia exclaiming in delight, pointing it out to Dudley who had his habitual expression of bored amusement plastered across his face. Dudley shrugged:

  ‘It’s total rubbish but buy it if you want…’

  Lizzie withdrew her hand. Psychometry gave her the ability to pry into other people’s lives sometimes but she really didn’t want to know what went on between Dudley and Amelia. She absentmindedly rubbed her fingers over the lines of the stone angel’s wings, tracing the intricate carving. It was a beautiful piece, the hands cupping the crystal ball, the head bent. As she touche
d it, she heard the thrum of the harp again but this time it wasn’t sweet and plaintive. There was a cold edge to it like shards of ice that sent a shiver down her spine.

  The world exploded suddenly around her. She felt a rush of movement and a blur of colour; she felt a hand in the small of her back, pushing hard, then she was falling, falling. There was a rush of air against her face and the lightness of empty space beneath her. There was fear screaming inside her head. Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the sensations passed. She was lying on the floor and people were buzzing around her like flies.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I heard her screaming…’

  ‘Trust Lizzie Kingdom to try and steal the limelight today of all days…’

  Lizzie sat up. Her head was woozy as though she had had too much champagne. Pieces of the crystal lay scattered about her in glittering shards, one of which had embedded itself in the palm of her right hand. It stung fiercely. She could hear Amelia in the background, wailing that Lizzie had broken her gazing ball.

  The stone angel lay next to her, unbroken. Lizzie felt dazed, her mind cloudy, sickness churning in her stomach. What the hell had happened? She knew she hadn’t smashed the crystal.

  People were still talking. No one seemed bothered about helping her up. She could hear Dudley’s voice: ‘For fuck’s sake, what’s the matter? It was only some cheap ornament.’ Amelia’s wails rose above the chatter. Lizzie focussed on keeping still and not throwing up. That would be the final humiliation. She felt like a pariah, abandoned in a sea of glass.