Assassin (10 page)

“That’s enough,” snapped Mrs. Champernowne. “When I wish to hear your lies, my lady, I shall ask for them.”

“Mrs. Champernowne, I can vouch that there was no young man,” said Lord Worthy. “There was no one else in the chapel.”

“Hmph,” said Mrs. Champernowne. Then she turned to Lord Worthy. “Thank you so much, my lord, for rescuing Lady Grace from her silliness…” She simpered disgustingly.

“Hmph,” I said.

Lord Worthy bowed, Mrs. Champernowne curtsied. He and all his men went off towards the Grace-and-Favour Chambers while she grabbed my arm and pulled me upstairs behind her, pinching nastily as she went. “If I find out there
was
a young gentleman…”

“You can use a strap on my bare bum, Mrs. Champernowne!” I said hotly, furious that they thought I was no better than any other twitter-head. “Do you think I’m as stupid as Lady Sarah?”

“Lady Sarah has not been found in St. Margaret’s Chapel at three in the morning where she had no
business to be,” Mrs. Champernowne pointed out.

“Not yet,” I muttered; luckily, Mrs. Champer-nowne didn’t hear. “I know it was foolish but I wanted to … um … say goodbye to Sir Gerald and I didn’t want to be surrounded by chattering fools when I did and so I climbed a couple of walls and went to do it privately, and there most certainly wasn’t any young gentleman anywhere near”—there was Masou, of course, but he’s not a gentleman, so this was quite true—“and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You were not in your bed when you should have been, and you were where you should not have been,” snapped Mrs. Champernowne—rather confusingly, I thought. “How dare you abuse Her Majesty’s trust in you, how dare you sneak around like…” Then she took hold of herself. “Well now,” she finished, “we will not bandy words like a couple of fishwives…”

Bit late for that, I thought. You must have woken half the Court with all that burbling, you old dragon.

At the top passageway she decided it was too late for me to retire to bed again and too early to tell the Queen, so she locked me in her little dressing room.

It was very dark and very stuffy and smelled rather
strongly of Mrs. Champernowne and rose-water and lavender water and a very expensive jasmine oil she gets from the east, which made the air almost too thick to breathe. I think she was hoping I would stand there stewing over what was going to happen in the morning, but I was really too exhausted. So I sat down on the rush matting, leaned my head in a corner, and went to sleep.

Hell’s teeth! I must go and find more ink.

Lady Sarah always keeps some ink new-made in her dressing table so I took that. She’ll never notice.

In the morning I was shaken awake by Mrs. Champernowne, who seemed just as furious. I didn’t get any breakfast and was told that Her Majesty would see me in the Presence Chamber, so I had to trot along behind Mrs. Champernowne in my grubby old hunting kirtle, all muddy from climbing walls. I kept thinking about Ellie and Masou. I really hoped they got away.

In the Presence Chamber the other Maids of Honour were sitting in a row on cushions, sewing—Lady Sarah I’m-so-pretty Bartelmy was mending a tear in one of her petticoats.

The Queen wasn’t on her throne, but the chair she was sitting in by the window had a cloth of estate over it, so it was sort of official. I went towards her when she beckoned me, and then stopped three paces away and went down on both knees.

Her Majesty has pale skin but very dark brown eyes which sometimes seem to be able to reach out and dig right into your head. They were doing that now. I looked down, trying not to feel grubby and insignificant. She let me kneel there in silence for a long time and then …

“
What
in the name of
God
happened last night?” she shouted. “Have you run wood-wild? God’s blood, I never heard the like!” And so on, swearing shockingly—which I have left out to save her reputation. Finally she ran out of ways of repeating that I’d been found in that cursed chapel by Lord Worthy. “Well, Lady Grace?” Her fingers rapped the arm of her chair. “What is your explanation?”

I sighed, feeling very tired. I also had a crick in my neck. But at least there was no sign that Masou or Ellie had been caught. If they had been, they would have been there in the Presence Chamber, too. That made me feel a lot better.

“We are waiting for an answer,” said Her Majesty coldly.

“Um … I wanted to … um … well, look at Sir Gerald one last time,” I offered.

“Why?” Her Majesty demanded rightly.

“I’m so sorry, Your Majesty, I just did.” I looked up.

“And did you at least pray?” the Queen enquired.

“No, Your Majesty, I didn’t have time. Lord Worthy came.”

“Hmph.” There seemed to be frustration in every inch of the Queen’s body. “Lord Worthy tells me that there was nobody else in the chapel and that he feels sure you were not there for any immoral reason … But for the sake of your reputation, Lady Grace, you must
not
behave like this. It is not seemly in any young heiress and most certainly not in anyone in my service.”

“No, Your Majesty,” I replied quietly.

Finally the Queen said, “You will return to your chamber, Lady Grace, and remain there until I send for you. Perhaps you are overwrought with the strain of the St. Valentine’s Ball and what took place afterwards. I shall ask Dr. Cavendish to attend you there and be sure that you are not sickening for anything.”

I kept my head down, wondering if the Queen was really as angry as she appeared. And then I heard Her Majesty sigh and she leaned forwards to speak
quietly in my ear. I saw some of the Ladies-in-Waiting looking over at us curiously, but they couldn’t hear what she said.

“See now, Grace, you have put me in a most trying position. I cannot be seen to countenance such wild behaviour,” she whispered. “You must try to be a little more discreet in your investigations.” Then she called for Mrs. Champernowne to take me back upstairs to my chamber.

Back in my room, I sat on the bed, hugely relieved that I still had Her Majesty’s support. Though, sadly, she seemed to have forgotten that I had not breakfasted. I sat listening to my stomach gurgle and wondered what to do next.

Thankfully, one of the tiring women brought me some bread and cheese and beer at midday. By that time I had washed off the mud, changed into my third-best kirtle, and was doing some embroidery by the little window. I started off hating needlework when my mama began to teach me. The sampler I first practised on seemed boring and pointless. But as I got better at it, I found I was able to draw pictures onto the white linen and then colour them in with silken threads. I find embroidering wonderful peacocks and singing birds and snakes and bears and horses a great comfort.

As the afternoon light faded, I had to stop because I couldn’t see well enough. I stamped around the room, feeling that awful itchiness under my ribs that you get when you’re bored. I would even have been quite pleased to see Lady Sarah and Mary Shelton. Then I thought of my daybooke and so I lit a candle and I have spent all this time writing and not caused very much mess. I’d better stop. There’s someone at the door.

It was Masou and Ellie! We hugged each other. Masou kept shaking his head and saying something in his own language so Ellie tutted at him.

“Did they birch you?” asked Ellie anxiously. “Is your bum sore? I brought some comfrey ointment in case…”

“No, no,” I told her, smiling. “It’s all right. I didn’t get any kind of beating. I’ve just been sent to my room until the Queen asks for me.”

“Did you see anything in Sir Gerald’s eyes?” asked Masou eagerly.

“No, but I did see something else,” I told them. “There was a yellow stain on Sir Gerald’s lips and
a nasty bitter smell about him and I remember that…” I stopped. I hated what came into my mind when I said that. “I remember it from … from when my…” I stopped again and swallowed hard. “That’s what killed my mother. Poison that made yellow froth on her mouth, that smelled bitter.”

“Yes,” said Ellie slowly. “And there was the same stuff in the sick I cleaned up from the mat in his chamber. A nasty yellow stain—I couldn’t get it out by candlelight and I tried ten-day-old urine on it yesterday, and it still wouldn’t come out.”

They use disgusting things to clean with at the laundry—I sometimes can hardly believe what Ellie tells me. For bad stains? Dog dirt so old it goes white, for instance!

“They had to put a new piece of matting in where my mother dropped the wine cup,” I said heavily, “because they couldn’t get the stain out.”

“But if he was dead by the poison, why stab him with the knife?” asked Masou.

He and Ellie both looked at me. “To confuse everybody? To make sure?” I suggested.

None of us could work it out. I told them I was probably not supposed to have any visitors and they should go, so Ellie picked up a very dirty shift of
Lady Sarah’s and they went out again. What I think is that

I had to stop again and put my pillow over everything, as my uncle, Dr. Cavendish, arrived. I hope it isn’t too blurred. There’s a little ink on the pillowcase, though.

Since my mother died, I have only ever seen my father’s brother in one of two states: drunk or hung over. He was hung over now—bloodshot eyes, grey face, miserable. He sighed and told me to sit on the bed and then he looked into my eyes and ears and mouth, put his ear to my chest, and then sat there quietly taking my pulses. There are twelve pulses, apparently.

Then he asked me questions, some of them very embarrassing, and when I told him “no” to all of them, he looked very puzzled.

“I would have said you were too young for the green sickness,” he said. “There’s no sign of fever, no sign of too much bile.”

“That’s because I’m not ill,” I told him. And nor
did I want to be ill—I hate being bled—and as for purging … Lord preserve me!

“Then what possessed you to do such a foolish thing, Grace?” he asked. “If you were some silly minx like Lady Sarah then I would not even need to ask, but you are normally such a sensible, level-headed girl.”

Am I? How boring, I thought. “I’m sorry that you should have seen so ugly a sight as a man killed with a dagger in his back while he slept,” Uncle Cavendish went on, “and more than sorry that it should have been done by your own betrothed. But you cannot let this sad business turn your head, Grace—”

“But, Uncle, Sir Gerald wasn’t killed by that knife,” I interrupted.

He gave me a weary smile. “And what makes you say that, Dr. Grace, eh?”

“Uncle, there was no blood,” I explained. “If you get stabbed by a knife, blood comes out.”

My uncle just stared at me.

“Don’t you remember telling me, Uncle?” I asked patiently. “You said that the heart is the body’s furnace and the lungs are the bellows for the furnace. And the blood—the sanguine humour, you
called it—carries the vital heat from the furnace to every part of the body, ebbing back and forth like tides.”

“That’s right,” my uncle agreed.

“But if the tides had stopped because the man was dead, there would be no waves of blood to flow from the wound,” I pointed out. “And I saw the dagger in Sir Gerald’s back and there was
no blood
, was there? You saw it, too,” I urged.