Page 65 of Her Scandalous Pursuit

Olivia was looking through it as she walked back to her nest of books. “Middle Ages. Fourteenth century, the Tudors. Oh, my, this is a large section.” She scanned through the pages, and suddenly her eyes widened. “She’s here! Thisbe, she’s here!” She looked up at her sister, beaming. “Anne Ballew.”

“What does it say?” Thisbe hurried over to her. They had been searching for so long it seemed as though they had won a prize.

“She was from Dorset.” Olivia scanned down the page.

“Dorset. That’s where Desmond grew up.”

“You think that’s significant?” Olivia asked.

Thisbe couldn’t help but remember Desmond’s words when he first told her about the Eye. His aunt believed he was Anne Ballew’s descendant. But the fact that they were both from Dorset didn’t prove anything; there were thousands of people from Dorset. She shook her head. “No. I’m sure not. It just seems...odd.”

“Go on, Livvy.” Bellard joined them.

“Doesn’t say anything about her having a husband or children. She was a ‘woman of great knowledge for her day, a well-educated and highly respected alchemist.’ An associate of John Dee. Moved to London. ‘The common mob knew her as Annie Blue and believed that she was a powerful witch, capable of speaking to the dead and even commanding them. Feared as a necromancer—’” Olivia looked up. “What does that mean?”

“I believe they’re saying she could raise the dead,” Bellard replied gravely.

Olivia’s jaw dropped.

“What else does it say?” Thisbe whisked the book from Olivia’s hand to look at the open page.

There, above the name Anne Ballew, was a drawing of a woman with a long face and dark, compelling eyes, her black hair bound up in an Elizabethan head covering. Thisbe went cold all over.

It was the woman of her nightmares.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“THISBE? ARE YOU all right?” Olivia peered into her face.

Thisbe most definitely was not, but she wasn’t about to tell anyone her insane notion. “I, um, was just...surprised, I suppose, to see a picture of her. I hadn’t expected there to be one.”

“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.”