Her Scandalous Pursuit

by Candace Camp

  “It wasn’t all that unusual,” Uncle Bellard commented. “People who had money often had their portraits made. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had accumulated some wealth, given her fame.”

  “Certainly her clothes would indicate that,” Olivia agreed.

  “Do you think this is actually a portrait done at the time? Or a drawing of the way someone imagined her years afterward?” Thisbe asked, unable to look away from the picture.

  “It would have to be an engraving of the original portrait, to have a plate for printing,” Bellard said. “Although...I’m not sure. Perhaps now they are able to do it with photography. Everything is changing so rapidly these days.”

  Whether it was Anne Ballew or an imagining of her, it didn’t change the fact that the woman in the book looked like the woman Thisbe had seen the last two times in her nightmares. Which was, of course, impossible.

  Bellard studied the drawing. “I believe this was drawn at the time she was alive. The style looks very much like other portraits of that time. A little flat, like the earlier paintings of Elizabeth.”

  “Not as well-done,” Thisbe said.

  “There were many portrait painters, and I’m sure that many of them lacked the skills of, say, Holbein.”

  Thisbe nodded. There was nothing to say that this was exactly how Anne Ballew had appeared. Even if it was done at the time, the artist probably flattered her a bit, made her fit the Elizabethan ideal, and he had not necessarily been the most skilled artist. Then an engraver had copied it, which would have changed it again, at least to some extent.

  Her mind was playing tricks on her. That was all. Like the victims of the spirit-photography charlatans, who had seen what they wanted to see, Thisbe had seen what was on her mind. There was some resemblance between the two women—the dark hair and eyes, the long face—and her mind had conveniently blended the two. She couldn’t have dreamed about a woman she’d never seen any more than her grandmother could gaze into the future.

  “What does it say about her?” Thisbe stepped back. She didn’t want to look at the drawing.

  “Only that she was condemned for her ‘vile and heretical’ practices and burned at the stake on January 27, 1556. Based, apparently, on the testimony of her neighbors and another alchemist, John Chisholm.” Olivia’s eyes widened. “This other alchemist fellow swore he saw her in the graveyard, calling up the dead.”

  “Jealousy,” Bellard suggested. “Minor territorial disputes, envy, fear—those were the basic ingredients for accusations of heresy and witchcraft.”

  “That’s all.” Olivia shrugged and closed the book. “No mention of the Eye or any magical instrument.”

  “Ah, but now we know that she died in the Marian persecutions.” Their uncle hastened over to a glass-fronted bookcase. “Bloody Mary—you’ll remember she was Catherine of Aragon’s daughter—executed almost three hundred people during her reign, trying to turn England back to Catholicism.”

  “Burning people seems an odd way of wooing back disbelievers,” Thisbe commented drily.

  “Religion can be a frightful thing in the hands of zealots,” Bellard responded. “The burnings were all over the country. In London, they were carried out in Smithfield.”

  “Where the market is?” Olivia asked.

  “Yes. In front of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. It was one of the few large open spaces, just outside the old city walls.”

  Ice trickled down Thisbe’s spine. She thought of the wide expanse where the woman in her dream had walked past the spectators to her execution. “Where crowds could gather.”

  “Yes, the mob was always eager to witness such a spectacle.”

  “How did they get there? The prisoners, I mean. Did they walk?” Thisbe asked, hoping for an answer that would negate her dream.

  But Uncle Bellard nodded. “Yes, it was quite close to Newgate Prison—not the present one, of course. The old one burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, but it stood in the same location. Just a short walk down Giltspur Street to the place of execution.”

  Thisbe felt queasy. “The old Newgate—did it have a tower on each side?”

  “Why, yes.” He smiled at her display of knowledge. “Here. Let me see.” He looked over the shelves beside him. “Ah, yes. Here it is.” He opened a book and flipped through the pages, then held it out to Thisbe. “This is a drawing of Newgate at that time.”

  It was the building she had seen behind the woman in her nightmare. Thisbe’s hands shook as she handed the book back to her uncle. He was already pulling out another old volume, and said happily, “Now, this should tell us something. It’s Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.” He shoved aside some papers on a table to lay the book on it.

  “What’s Foxe’s Book of Martyrs?” Olivia came over to join them.

  “It’s a recounting of Christian martyrs starting from the very beginning—an enormous task. John Foxe wrote it early in Elizabeth’s reign. It was a very influential book at the time. There were few books, you understand, and this one had great appeal. Even those who couldn’t read could look at the drawings of various gruesome tortures and deaths.” He flipped through the pages quickly. “It was very thorough and detailed. For our purposes, the important ones are the Marian martyrs. Let’s see, yes, here we are, 1555.”

  He moved through the pages more slowly now, running his finger down the lines and muttering beneath his breath. “Look at all these—several a day sometimes.” He shook his head. “January... Ah.” He tapped his finger triumphantly on one paragraph. “Ann Bellow. What do you want to bet that is our woman? Spelling was so variable then.”

  “What does it say?” Thisbe leaned in, as did Olivia on her great-uncle’s other side.

  “Disappointingly little, I’m afraid. It just lists her as one of six martyrs who were burned on that day. ‘Ann Bellow, artificer.’”

  “What’s an artificer?” Thisbe asked. “A profession?”

  “It means someone who creates things. A craftsman or inventor.” He sighed. “They often gave short shrift to women, I’m afraid, even in regard to their martyrdom. Here’s one that says only ‘wife of’ someone. And, of course, her heresy wasn’t really Protestantism. They do point out that it was most unusual to have so many women executed thusly. January 31 has a group of five women.” He looked over at Thisbe. “Sorry, my dear. I’m afraid that’s it.”

  “I doubt we’ll find much more.” Thisbe glanced around the room at the hundreds of volumes. She felt odd, rather remote, as if the world had suddenly changed around her. “At least we know she existed.”

  “And that she supposedly could speak to the dead, as Grandmother claims,” Olivia added. “Do you suppose she used the Eye? What do you think it’s like when you look through it?”

  “My guess is that it’s all prisms and mirrors and such, along the lines of a kaleidoscope, and what you see through it is a shadowy blur, which believers can interpret any way they want,” Thisbe mused. Obviously her reaction to the drawing of Anne Ballew was proof that even a reasonable mind was suggestible. “I’m sorry, Uncle Bellard. I’m afraid I’ve wasted your time.”

  “Dear girl, not a waste at all.” He took her hand and patted it. “I enjoyed it, and now that I’m on the hunt, I believe I’ll continue following the trail of Cornelia’s family. Who knows what interesting tidbits I could turn up.”

  “I’m going back to work.” Thisbe turned to Olivia. “I wasted your time, too. I think there’s no use in looking any further.”

  “I think I’ll stay here,” Olivia said. “I want to see what else I could find about those séances in the States.”

  Thisbe walked back to her laboratory, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to work. She felt much too unsettled by what she’d learned. Thisbe’s nightmare visitor was Anne Ballew; the certainty rested in her chest like lead.

  The idea was impossible. It wasn’t logical. Yet she could
not deny what she had seen; she couldn’t dismiss an observation because it made her uncomfortable. After all, science required an open mind. A scientist followed the facts. And the fact was she had recognized Anne Ballew.

  But how could she have dreamed of a woman she’d never seen? Or dreamed of fire before she knew the woman was burned? How could she have seen the place of Anne Ballew’s execution or the old Newgate Prison that had disappeared two hundred years ago?

  And, aside from the inexplicable “hows” of it, there were the equally mysterious “whys.” What did the dreams mean? Why was she the one who was seeing them? Her grandmother seemed a far likelier choice, given her supposed ability to commune with the dead. Why had Thisbe felt the sensations that Anne Ballew had, as if she and Anne were the same?

  She wanted to talk to someone about this, but who? Desmond whispered through her mind, but she thrust it away. Theo? Kyria? But they would have no better understanding of it than she did. And they might very well stare at her as if she had lost her mind. Which, perhaps, she had.

  There was her grandmother, who would at least believe her, but she would make far too much of it and interpret the thing in whatever way suited her. She would say it proved her theory that they were descended from Anne Ballew.

  The thing was...what if her grandmother was right?

  They had found nothing to prove that Anne Ballew was the dowager duchess’s ancestor, but neither had they found anything that proved she was not. Absence of proof wasn’t really proof. What if Anne Ballew’s line had gone down from mother to daughter for multiple generations, ending now with Thisbe and her sisters? The woman was speaking to her descendant, reminding Thisbe that she owed her very existence to her ancestor.

  It made as much sense as anything else in this strange situation. Unfortunately, that was none at all. Dreaming about a woman who’d died centuries earlier went so far past the realm of reality that it teetered on the edge of madness. Yet here she was, a heretofore rational woman, attempting to reason out what the nightmare Anne Ballew wanted of her.

  The woman had asked for help. “Help me, save me”—something like that. Or maybe it had been “save him.” Had she mentioned a child? Thisbe wished now that she had written down the exact words right after the event. It would make sense if, in the throes of her death, Anne’s last thought had been of her child. But what could Thisbe do about it? Anne and any child of hers had been in the ground three hundred years.

  And now here she was, calling the nightmare figure “Anne,” as if she knew her. As if the figure were not a figment of Thisbe’s own imagination. As if one’s dying wish could travel down through the centuries into a dream.

  She tried to put the problem of her dreams out of her mind, but she kept returning to it, like a tongue to a sore tooth. After a night spent tossing and turning—though, thankfully without dreams—Thisbe arose early and went up to her great-uncle’s room, carrying a breakfast tray for him.

  Knocking softly, Thisbe opened the door a crack—it was always problematic whether Bellard would either hear a knock or answer it—and peeked in. Uncle Bellard was seated at one of the tables with a large book before him, and was scribbling away on a piece of paper.

  He looked up and smiled. “Ah, Thisbe. Is it time for breakfast already?” He glanced toward the windows. “I should open the drapes.”

  “I’ll do it.” Thisbe set the tray on the table and went over to draw the drapes on the row of windows along the far wall.

  When she returned to her uncle, he had plowed through half his food. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”

  “You missed dinner last night.” Thisbe sat down across from him and poured their tea.

  “Really?” He tilted his head, considering the matter. “I believe I did. I’ve become quite caught up with this search for your ancestor. I followed some of the side paths that I didn’t yesterday—still no Ballew, but Cornelia was doubtless right in saying her family would have changed their name.”

  “Do you really think we’re descended from Anne Ballew?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.” He beamed. “But it’s terrific fun tracking them down. Now, tell me what brought you here so early in the day.”

  Thisbe took a fortifying sip of tea. “Uncle Bellard, you are the most intelligent person I know.”

  “Why, thank you, dear.” He patted her hand. “But it’s rather hard to judge such things. Henry is very bright, and my sister as well, though Hermione has put her brain to no good use.”

  “I wanted to ask your opinion about something. I’ve been having this dream. Well, dreams.” She told him about her dreams, the portrait of Anne Ballew and her wild suppositions about the connection. After finishing, she asked, “Do you think that any of that is possible? Or is it pure madness?”

  “I don’t know, dear. I suppose it could be either.” Bellard seemed unalarmed by the possibility that she had lost her mind. “Let’s consider these dreams. First, you dreamed of being at the stake, then of being in the fire, and—”

  “Well, actually, I had another strange dream before that,” Thisbe said. “It wasn’t about fire or Anne Ballew, but it was peculiar and vivid, like the others. It was very vague, but I felt as if something was hunting for me, trying to reach me, and then I—Something grabbed my leg, and I woke up.”

  She refrained from mentioning the nail marks she had found on her leg afterward, just as she’d omitted the blisters and raw fingertips that had mirrored her other dreams. Those things were entirely too strange to tell anyone, even her open-minded uncle. He popped up from his chair to pull a book from the shelves.

  “I see.” He contemplated what she had said. “So the first dream is of something searching for you and ultimately latching onto you. Then you experience the binding and the fire as if you are the one at the stake. And lastly you see Anne Ballew in the same situation.”

  “So if our alchemist’s spirit, for want of a better term, had found a way to communicate with you, the first dream could be her search for you. And then she found you. And when you experienced the fire...”

  “She was inside me?” Thisbe’s voice rose to a squeak. “Controlling me?”

  “Not possessing you, no, but perhaps trying to, um, establish her actual identity.”

  Thisbe stared. “Which she accomplished in the last dream, when I saw her at the execution.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But, Uncle Bellard, that’s—that’s preposterous.”

  “Oh, yes.” He nodded cheerfully. “But it’s quite interesting to think about, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose. But it doesn’t make it any less insane.”

  “I shouldn’t worry about that.” Bellard reached out and patted her hand. “I will return your compliment by telling you that you are one of the most intelligent people I know. You also have your feet on the ground more solidly than any of us Morelands—though I do believe Reed is very practical, as well. You see things clearly, your thinking is precise and you’ve never believed in absurdities. No one would say you’re given to flights of fancy, let alone insane.”

  “Thank you.” Thisbe smiled back. “But I have trouble believing it myself. It’s so absurd.”

  “Many things have been deemed absurd, only to later be proven correct. The universe is limitless but our understanding of it is small. The fact that we cannot explain how something happened doesn’t prove that it did not happen.”

  “True.” Thisbe nodded. It was much the same thought she had had the afternoon before.

  “Your young man and I had an interesting conversation along those lines one afternoon. Mr. Gordon’s research provokes disdain, but are we being too narrow in our thinking? Shouldn’t we explore such things rather than immediately dismiss them? If so, then mustn’t we admit that the same principle applies to the things Cornelia has been saying all these years? Just because we cannot see the spirits, does
it prove that she cannot?”

  Thisbe’s heart squeezed in her chest at her uncle’s mention of Desmond, but she ignored it and said, “But Grandmother’s tales are always so...”

  “Grandiose and self-serving?” Bellard ventured. “That is true, and I suspect she embellishes her stories. But, again, the fact that one has lied or exaggerated doesn’t mean she isn’t telling the truth about other things.”

  “What should I do? I want to stop having these dreams. If I could figure it out, maybe they would stop.”

  “I think your answer is to talk to your grandmother,” Bellard replied. “I’d examine this Eye thing. Use it and see what one really sees. I trust your judgment—you should, too. You have to explore the possibility before you can reach any conclusion.”

  “You’re right.” However galling it would be, she had to talk to her grandmother.

  The dowager duchess proved to be as annoyingly delighted as Thisbe had foreseen. “At last you have seen the light. I have waited so long for one of my granddaughters to recognize their gift. I knew it wouldn’t be my daughter—Patricia was altogether too flighty. I thought it would be Olivia—I wonder if it’s possible that both of you...”

  “Grandmother, I don’t have any gift. Surely I would have noticed it before now if ghosts were hovering around me.”

  “It may take time to develop, but it will come,” Cornelia said complacently. “Now that you are willing to accept it.”

  “What I want is to learn more about Anne Ballew. How do you know she is your ancestor if she changed her name?”

  “Sadly, Anne herself is someone I’ve never been fortunate enough to contact. All I know about her is what my grandmother told me. Anne was an alchemist, and she was well-respected, accepted by her peers even though she was a woman. But she had more than brains. She had a gift, more powerful than anyone before her—or since, for that matter.”

  “This power—I don’t really understand it. Are you saying it’s magical? That she was a witch?”