repeating.’ She touched Arthur’s arm gently. ‘The pattern is broken now, but to finish this we need to set Amy’s spirit free. So many wrongs have been done to her in life and the afterlife. We’re closing the circle, showing her that it is over.’
Arthur looked around. The willows bent low over the edge of the pool and trailed their bare branches in the water. ‘It’s probably just my imagination,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like it here. There’s a bad feeling in the air.’
‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. She’d felt it from the moment she had seen the dark water glittering in the low sun.
‘I almost expect to see a flash of lightning and an apparition from a horror film,’ Arthur said. He dug his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and hunched his shoulders. ‘Poor Amy,’ he said. ‘What a horrible fate.’
Lizzie put down the cardboard box she had been carrying and lifted the lid. Inside was a wreath of leaves and flowers that she had created that morning with Avery’s help.
‘It’s Quercus robur,’ she said, in answer to Arthur’s quizzical look, ‘the English oak. It’s strong and beautiful.’ She touched the petals of the pink flowers she had laid on top of the entwined oak stems and dark green leaves. ‘These are carnations,’ she said. ‘They’re the descendants of the pinks and clove gillyflowers that people grew in Tudor times. They were a symbol of undying love.’
‘I recognise them from Amy Robsart’s wedding portrait,’ Arthur said. ‘She was wearing a brooch with oak leaves and gillyflowers.’
‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s a symbol from a time when Amy had both great love and great hope in her life,’ she said. ‘I wanted her to know that she is not forgotten and that hope can rise again.’
Lizzie held the wreath in her hand for a moment and then she took a step back and threw it overarm into the deep water. She heard the splash and saw the ripples spread and then fade.
‘Nice throw,’ Arthur said.
‘I was in the school netball team,’ Lizzie said. She put her hand in his and they stood side by side.
She watched the garland settle on the water. She felt the spiral of love and grief rise up from the waters then, felt it flare into life and die down, until it was washed away and a shaft of sunlight cut through the overhanging willows and danced across the surface of the pond, reflecting shades of green and gold and citrine onto the oaken and gillyflower wreath.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the best way to break the destructive patterns of the past, of any past, is to write a different future. We can do that now.’
Epilogue
Amy Robsart, The Citrine Pool
From the other side of the pool I watch them, Elizabeth and Arthur, joined now through time and destiny. This is a different Elizabeth from the one I had known. She is as brave as the first Elizabeth, but she is kinder and more generous. She has changed, and in doing so she has altered the course of fate and the futures of those who are to come.
Elizabeth, my enemy, you were the only one who could help me. You saw that the truth needed to be told. You broke the pattern.
Yet in the end it is your kindness that heals me. Kindness cannot alter the past but it can change the future. It can bring peace.
I watch with them as the sun falls brilliant and bright on the oak and gillyflower wreath and the waters of the pool dazzle in shades of green and gold. I feel my spirit expand as it touches freedom.
They turn to leave. His arm is about her, her head against his shoulder. They love. They will always love. This, I know.
My time is done now. I can leave too, slip away and be gone, with love and hope in my heart. I am no longer trapped. I can go where I will and be free. It is a beautiful day.
Acknowledgements
The mystery of the death of Amy Robsart is one of the most enduring puzzles in English history. Amy, whose husband Robert Dudley was a childhood friend and favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, died at Cumnor Manor in Oxfordshire on 8th September 1560. The subsequent scandal forever destroyed Robert Dudley’s chances of marrying the Queen.
Amy has fascinated me for years, perhaps because, like the other historical women who have inspired my books, her story so often gets lost in a bigger