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At the name “Mary,” Emma’s head jerked up and her eyes flew open. But she was not the only one at
the table to react.
“Anne, did you say?” Tess blurted. “Anne is with us?”
“Queen Anne comes to our table,” Madame Renata said. “Graces us with her royal presence. Your
Anne is not here. She eats stew.”
“Stew?” Tess said wildly. “What do you mean, she eats stew?”
“Hush, Tess darling,” Geraldine said softly. “Let the woman do her work.”
“Queen Anne is with us,” Madame Renata continued. “Daughter of Thomas, wife of Henry, mother to
Elizabeth. She says she knows what it means to love, but to remain unloved in return.”
Emma felt the first stirrings of anxiety. Geraldine claimed she said nothing to Madame Renata about
the purpose of the evening beyond the fact they sought a young girl. It was highly unlikely that she had
mentioned Hever Castle at all, so Madame Renata’s contention that the spirit of Queen Anne had
manifested… Well, what was one to make of it? That Madame Renata’s use of her name was sheer
coincidence or could it be proof that from somewhere in the netherworld, Anne Boleyn was incensed
over the abuses taking place in her childhood home? And then the bit about Mary…
“Mary, Queen of Heaven,” Madame Renata said, as if she was reading Emma’s mind. “You honor us
with your presence.”
So the “Anne” was Anne Boleyn and the “Mary” was the Virgin Mary. Well, Emma thought, cynicism
once again trumping fear, we certainly seem to have drawn an illustrious group. She looked around
the table, hoping to catch the eye of Marjorie, who would likely also be skeptical, but the young
woman’s head was still bowed and her eyes still closed. She was chewing her lip nervously, perhaps
trying to come to terms with the surprising news that while they were surrounded by saints and
royalty, her little sister was off somewhere eating a bowl of stew.
“Another Mary steps into our circle as well,” Madame Renata said, her voice dropping to a murmur.
“She is the one in red and she bears a message…”
Emma clinched her jaw, belief and unbelief waging war within her pounding heart. The last time
Emma had seen her sister alive, Mary had been wrapped in a ruffled red cape. The garish dress of a
girl who makes her living on the streets. They may have been sisters by birth, but their lives had
diverged so totally by that point…one of them scrapping for a living on the mean streets of
Whitechapel, the other installed in one of the mansions of Mayfair. On that windy afternoon, they had
simply observed each other from afar, silently acknowledging the width of the divide between them,
and then each had turned away. The image had tortured Emma for the totally of the last year. Should
she have charged across the street and grabbed her sister’s red-cloaked arm? Somehow thought of
the right words to persuade the girl away from her inconceivable determination to live as she did?
With a little more effort, might she have changed Mary’s fate and thus saved her life?
“The spirits say we must focus not on the past, but on the present,” said Madame Renata, once again
as if in answer to Emma’s unspoken questions. “They assure us that they shall help our cause from the