The Queen's Secret (45 page)

Still, her body disagreed with the equanimity of her mind. As her assassin sat beside her on the mattress, her mouth let out a feeble cry and her hands fluttered up to save herself.

It was a man. She knew his smell, the scent of leather and horses …

‘Robert!’

‘Hush,’ he said swiftly, grasping her hands and pressing them gently. ‘You are sick. Very sick. Do not attempt to speak.’

‘The child is dead.’

‘I know.’ He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I spoke to the physician just now, before I came in. He says the worst is over. Do you hear me, my beloved? You will be well again.’

Her mind burned with confusion. Was she imagining his visit, the touch of his cool lips on her face?

‘I’m sorry,’ she managed.

He said nothing, and again she dreamed herself back into her nightmare, with the assassin creeping slowly through the room. At any moment his hand might descend on her mouth, to crush the life out of her frail body and leave only this husk for her husband.

Sighing, she turned her face into the pillow. What did it matter? She was tired of life, of men. Only the thought of her children still had the power to animate her.

‘Ask my children to forgive me,’ she said, her voice muffled against the covers, ‘and kiss them goodbye for me.’

‘No, no!’ Robert was kneeling beside the bed, his face close to hers. His hands shook her, disturbing the deadly slumber into which she so desired to slip. ‘Stay awake, Lettice! Open your eyes, my love, my little love!’

What had he called her?

She forced her eyelids open and stared at him by candlelight. He was so close, she could see the soft hazel flecks in his dark, dark eyes. She reached out to stroke his cheek. ‘Robert,’ she whispered, her quiet words meant only for him. ‘You should not come here. I am cursed. If the Queen should hear of your visit—’

‘Damn the bitch, I’m done with her,’ he replied in a low, shaking voice. ‘She has played me long enough. Your husband cannot live for ever. And when he dies, you and I shall be wed.’

‘He will outlive me, I fear.’

‘No, he will not,’ Robert stated, without any hesitation. ‘Even if I have to see to that myself.’

Her breath strangled in her throat and Lettice felt herself faint, the world slipping away into an odd, rushing paleness. When she came to again, opening her lids to a dim, candlelit chamber and her lover’s strong arms supporting her, she raised her gaze to his handsome face and found nothing but love there, glowing fierce and true in the darkness.

‘I love you,’ she managed weakly, knowing she would die happy now, with those words on her lips.

Robert smiled, and bent to kiss her.

‘And I love you,’ he whispered. His voice grew harder, clearer. ‘But you must shake off this sickness, Lettice. The Queen shall not dictate who I am to woo or wed, and if your husband returns from Ireland you will need all your strength to face him.’

Forty-eight

LUCY GAZED UP
at the tall, brilliantly lit windows of the Queen’s state apartments high above, and shivered.

The fireworks were long since finished, a chill northerly wind had begun to blow, and the sloping castle grounds stood dark and hostile at the mereside wall. The Queen would have retired to bed in her royal chambers by now, accompanied only by one or two of her women, and although her personal guards would be on the doors, they were unlikely to know that conspirators against Her Majesty might be attempting to gain entry to the castle that very night.

Lucy had no cloak and was still wearing her court slippers, too fine and thin-soled for wandering about this rough, nettled slope between the castle and the outer walls. But there had been no time to change her gown or shoes, or even slip a pair of wooden pattens over them to protect them from the dirt. Instead, she wrapped her arms about her chest for warmth and hoped she had not drawn Tom and poor young Will out into the dark on a fool’s errand.

‘Come on,’ Tom murmured in her ear. ‘There’s no sign of Master Goodluck here. We should try further out, beyond the tiltyard.’

She hesitated, agreeing with Tom yet somehow unwilling to move on. She stared up towards the Queen’s apartments as though the answer might lie there. The gate in the mereside wall was guarded. She could see the broad bulk of the guard even from
this
distance, and knew that many more must stand at arms inside the towers beyond. Her Majesty was well protected. So why were the hairs standing up on the back of her neck, her belly aching with an unexplained fear?

The dark slope above, which led over rough ground to the gate in the mereside wall, did not look inviting. Indeed, she would never have countenanced taking such a route without Tom at her side to protect her. Yet that was the way they ought to take tonight, she felt it in her bones.

‘Goodluck told me about a room beyond that gate,’ she said, pointing. ‘A locked room, and the key gone missing. He thought it was important but he was not sure how it could be useful to the assassins. Tom, what if they have the key to that room and are able to get through the gate?’

‘But it’s guarded, look.’

‘Guards can be killed,’ she whispered, shivering. ‘Or bribed. It’s worth a look, at least.’

Tom held her eyes deliberately a moment, then nodded. ‘If you believe we should climb up there and watch the gate rather than keep looking for your guardian, then that’s exactly what we shall do.’

‘Thank you.’

Belatedly, Lucy thought to leave the boy behind as lookout. He was too young and soft-faced to help defend the Queen. Besides, if anything happened to him, how would she face his father, who might even now be scouring the lakeside for him?

‘Will you stay here for us, Will,’ she asked, indicating a dip in the bank where he could sit, ‘and whistle a loud warning if you see anyone coming this way?’

‘If you are right, it would be better to send him away altogether,’ Tom muttered, still staring into the darkness, his words intended only for her. ‘As soon as they realize he’s a lookout, they’ll slit the boy’s throat.’

Such a grim possibility had not occurred to her.

Tight-chested, she took young Will by the hand and tried to smile encouragingly. ‘Indeed, dearest, if you could … If you are able to find Master Twist and tell him where we are, that would be the most help to us now.’

Will looked sulky at this suggestion and glanced at Tom over her shoulder, as though suspicious that he was behind this request. ‘Leave you? But what if you are attacked? You may need me.’ Stoutly, the boy stuck out his chest. ‘I’m stronger than I look.’

‘I know, and I do need you, Will. But someone has to fetch Master Twist and his friends.’ She added a hint of urgency. ‘Find them as quickly as you can and bring them to us here, below the royal apartments.’

‘You’ll wait for me to return?’

She shook her head, though wishing secretly that they
could
wait for the others to arrive. The thought of what might lie in store for them was terrifying.

‘We must go on. The Queen may be in danger.’

Once the boy had gone, scampering away across the outer court with the effortless speed of the young, Lucy turned and began to follow Tom up the steep bank. She slipped a little on the loose soil, holding up her white and gold skirts. It was growing colder now and the tall trees around them, their branches heavy with summer green, rustled menacingly in the dark. ‘Maybe Will’s right,’ she called out after him as they climbed. ‘We could wait here until Goodluck’s men come to help us. What good can we do, after all, just the two of us?’

But Tom was not listening. A cry of ‘Fire! Fire!’ had risen above them at the base of the Queen’s apartments. A muffled alarm bell began to clang somewhere inside the castle. Soon after, two men came running with sloshing buckets from Mortimer’s Tower, the nearest waterside defences. The guard must have unlocked the gate to allow them entry, for they passed through unchallenged; now the gate stood wide open, and the guard too had disappeared, leaving his post unattended.

‘Tom!’ she cried, clutching at his arm.

‘I see them,’ he said grimly, for as they had paused in their steep ascent to the wall, three dark figures had slipped through the undefended gate, the largest of the three shambling along on all fours, beast-like, a chain about its neck.

‘The bear and his tamer!’

Suddenly, Lucy came to a halt. She leaned forward from the waist, out of breath, not wanting to go on.

‘Those men …’ For the love of God, she could barely speak. ‘They are the assassins, I know it for sure now. Tom, we must fetch help. Master Goodluck—’

‘May be dead for all we know.’ Tom shook his head and motioned her to keep climbing. After a moment, she followed him up the rough slope towards the open gate, protesting urgently, but Tom did not seem to hear her. He turned near the top, a light in his eyes. ‘It’s too late now to fetch help. Besides, young Will has gone to tell Master Twist where we are. We must follow those men and stop them before they reach the Queen.’

‘You and I alone?’

‘Yes, but with God on our side,’ he reminded her, reaching for her hand. His fingers found hers in the darkness and squeezed them gently. ‘Whatever name you give your God, Lucy, pray to him now for the strength and courage to go on. What, would you leave your duty undone out of fear?’

Struck by his words, she shook her head slowly.

‘Then come through the gate with me,’ he urged her, and helped Lucy up the last few feet. Hand in hand, they came to the high wall that stood between the inner and outer courts, and hurried through the unguarded gate. ‘We may be the only ones who saw them, who know the assassins are inside the castle. They may already have found their way to the Queen. You think any of those will help us?’

He pointed at the wide-open door to the storeroom from which a thick, stinking smoke was already pouring. Through the livid red glow from the flames inside, she could make out the silhouettes of men running back and forth, no doubt attempting to move the most precious of the Queen’s belongings before they caught fire. A shout for ‘Water!’ had gone up along the wall defences and the alarm bell was now tolling in earnest, waking those who had already retired for the night.

She knew what Tom meant, watching that chaotic scene. Which of those guards, frightened out of their wits by the consequences of a fire in Her Majesty’s storeroom, would spare a few minutes to search along the base of the castle for … what? A wandering bear and his tamer? An assassin whose face no one had ever seen?

‘No,’ she whispered in agreement, and turned to climb higher into darkness.

One hand resting on the knife at his belt, Tom pushed his way through the bushes with Lucy struggling along behind him, vicious holly branches snagging on her embroidered sleeves and skirts. A gust of wind made the foliage shake and rustle ominously, and for a moment she feared that someone was in there, watching from behind the thick, impenetrable branches.

Tom uttered a strong oath, staring through the windy dark. He lifted his arm and pointed ahead to a low, rectangular blackness outlined against the red sandstone of the castle walls.

‘Look!’

‘What is it?’ She came level with him, frowning as she tried to make out what he had seen. ‘Is that a door?’

He grabbed her arm as she went to pass him, and shook his head. ‘Wait, there may be someone on the other side.’

‘Now who’s afraid?’

He stood a moment, as though trying to balance different paths in his head, then drew the dagger from his belt.

‘I want you to stay here until the others arrive,’ he said, his voice firm. ‘I’m going through that door to see where it leads.’

‘What, stay here and get my throat cut too?’

‘Come with me then,’ he agreed reluctantly, weighing the brutal-looking dagger on his palm. ‘Keep close behind me, and if I shout, run.’

He pushed at the thick, black-studded door in the castle wall and it opened easily, left unlocked by whoever had entered earlier. Over his shoulder, Lucy could see nothing at first but darkness, then a faint glimmer of light at the far end of the chamber. Bending as low as she could manage, she slipped after Tom through the narrow doorway and into the room beyond. A small lantern had been set in an alcove, by whose light she could just make out an opening in the ceiling high above them, and the ghostly glimmer of a rope dangling from its dark hole.

Jumping down from the threshold, which was set higher than the chamber itself, she bumped up against Tom’s rigid form.

Caught off balance, Lucy stumbled sideways and almost fell
over
a heap of empty storage chests lying scattered across the earthen floor; the wood was so rotten, she put her foot straight through one of them, crying aloud at the pain in her ankle.

A furious roar from the shadows made her straighten.

‘Lucy, get out of here!’

At Tom’s warning shout, she jerked her foot free in sudden alarm and staggered backwards into the damp, lichened wall. Ahead of them in the chamber was a roaring black mass which blocked out the meagre light thrown by the lantern. For a moment she stared up at the monster, wide-eyed, so terrified she could hardly breathe.