The Queen's Secret (46 page)

‘Holy Mother, defend us!’ she whispered under her breath, and crossed herself.

It was only as the demon moved, rearing up and extending dangerously claw-tipped paws, that she realized what it was – no creature of childhood nightmares, but the Italian’s performing bear.

Tom ran forward with a shout, feinting with his dagger and whirling about the bear’s bulky figure, no doubt trying to draw the animal away from her. The black bear turned, swiping at Tom and giving another infuriated roar.

Suddenly, a swarthy face appeared at the opening in the ceiling. Staring up, she recognized the bear-tamer. Without hesitation, the bearded man swung down the rope and landed with a thud on the earthen floor.

With her back still against the wall, Lucy cried out a warning to Tom, who was engaged in a deadly game of tag with the bear. But before Tom could create any space between himself and the bear’s claws, the Italian drew a curved dagger from inside the folds of his cloak and leapt towards him.

‘Run for the guards!’ Tom shouted across at her as he lunged, making the bearded Italian dance swiftly backwards.

Lucy glanced back at the narrow doorway, a smoky glimmer of light just visible on the grassy bank outside. Then she looked up at the black opening in the ceiling with its sturdy rope still dangling just short of the ground. The bear-tamer must have stayed behind to guard the escape route. Which meant someone else was the assassin – and was already up there, in the royal
apartments.
No doubt undetected, thanks to the fire that had been deliberately set in the Queen’s storeroom.

Not stopping to consider what she was about to do, Lucy ran forward and made a grab for the rope. She missed it and gave a despairing cry, stumbling and falling to her knees.

Frowning, the swarthy Italian turned to stare at her.

Tom instantly lunged again, catching the man off-guard and slashing through his cloak.

Lucy backed up a few steps, tucked her skirts up under the belted waist of her gown, then leapt again, aiming higher than before. This time she caught the rope and dragged herself upwards, remembering how to pull her own weight, hand over hand, until her feet were gripping the rope too and she could shinny upwards. It hurt terribly, her palms stinging at the unaccustomed roughness of the rope, her shoulders almost wrenched out of their sockets at each pull, but she fixed her eyes on the dark opening above and kept climbing.

From the darkness below, Lucy heard the bear roar in fury again and then Tom cry out, swearing violently.

Her heart nearly burst at his cry. Had Tom been wounded?

She dared not stop and look back. Reaching the hatch in the roof, Lucy angled one knee and wedged it inside the dusty frame. Swinging her other leg up with a terrible ripping sound as the gold-embroidered skirt tore, she dragged herself on to the wooden floor beyond and lay there a moment, panting with exertion.

Forcing herself to sit up, Lucy stared breathlessly about the small, darkened room. It was another windowless storage chamber, containing what appeared to be chests and wooden barrels at floor level and stacks of woollen blankets on shelves. The door was only a few feet away, standing slightly ajar, and through it she could see torchlight.

She leaned back over the opening and called Tom’s name, her voice oddly hoarse, echoing about the walls.

There was no reply. She stared hard a moment longer, but could see only the faintest glimmer of movement in the heavy shadows below. Then she remembered her mission.

The Queen! She must alert the guards!

Lucy staggered to the door in her torn gown, heart pounding,
arms
and legs aching fiercely from the climb, and yanked it wide. A dark narrow corridor led away from the room, ending in a blank wall with one heavily studded door. She found it unlocked and opened it into another dark storage area, this time so cluttered with boxes and chests piled to the ceiling, she had to clamber about their teetering stacks to reach the curtained opening in the opposite wall. The curtain had been pulled slightly to one side, and through it she could see brighter torchlight, the gleaming polished wood of the Queen’s building.

Hesitating behind the curtain, she heard shouts of ‘Fire!’ and ‘Water!’ in the distance, the voices too far off to be of any help. She must go on alone.

Lucy drew a shaky breath, then forced herself to creep past the curtain and out into the light.

On the landing outside the royal chambers, a few feet apart in the flickering torchlight, lay the bodies of two guards, one slumped against the wall with a great gash in his throat, the other with his head at an odd angle, his neck clearly broken.

Beyond them, the double doors to the Presence Chamber stood wide open and undefended.

Holding her breath, Lucy stooped to pluck the young man’s knife from his belt, ignoring the blood that dribbled over her fingers. Then, on silent feet, she stepped over the other body and entered the Queen’s apartments.

Forty-nine

THE LAST TORCH
had guttered and been thrown into the stream beside him. The acrid taste of its smoky remains was still in his mouth as Goodluck emerged from the water, gasping like a landed fish. He was almost grateful for the searing pain in his lungs, the way his mouth sucked on the air like a crazed baby at the breast, unable to do anything but make this rasping sound. At least this way he had no time for thought, except the most basic:
survival
.

Such a sharp focus brought complications of its own, however. The easiest thing would be to spill everything he knew, hoping for a quick death. But England demanded more loyalty from him than that, and he had his pride.

‘Why do you watch?’ The questions came in rapid, broken English, one after the other, hoping to confuse him. ‘What is your master? Your name, who is it?’

Goodluck choked, still gargling in the back of his throat, and spat out a mouthful of water that wet the young Italian’s shirt.

Alfonso – as the bear-tamer had called him – swore fiercely in his own tongue. With an iron hand, he pushed Goodluck head first back into the chill stream and held him there.

Goodluck struggled to remain calm, not to fight the water that swirled about him, coldly filling every orifice and threatening to overwhelm him. Soon, he would no longer be able to refuse to
answer.
Everyone had their limits and his were fast approaching. Blotting out the truth, he concentrated on the questions he could most innocently answer, reciting them in his mind, knowing that soon he would have to speak.

‘Your name, who is it?’

Goodluck, my name is Goodluck
.

Once a person yields to torture and begins to speak, giving his name and his barest details, that is when the one interrogating him should press the hardest, for it is then that a man is most likely to betray himself and his friends.

‘Your master?’

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
.

Mentally, he shied away from the name of his true master. Walsingham. He must not even think of it. He was from Warwickshire, not London. He was one of Leicester’s men, a simple soldier from a quiet Warwickshire village. A son of the soil. His parents had worked all their lives in the fields. This was all a terrible mistake. He was no spy.

‘Why do you watch?’

I came into the forest to relieve myself and heard a strange beast. I was curious. Then I saw
—

The hand gripped his hair, dragging him back into a thick, lung-scraping darkness, and the relentless battering of questions.

‘Who are you?’

‘Goodluck,’ he managed, through a mouthful of weed-infested stream water, resisting the urge to retch. ‘Goodluck.’

Again, a throaty voice cried out, ‘It is the same answer. Put him back in!’

Oh, she was not stupid either, the woman who had stayed behind to help Alfonso with the interrogation. She was nothing like the one with the knife. But just as vicious, an older, round-hipped creature nearing her thirtieth year whose stony eyes and uncouth tongue made her feminine curves uninviting.

Thrusting her foot down on the back of his head, the hoarse-voiced woman shoved Goodluck into the dark water almost up to his chest.

He thrashed about, too tired to act the hero, becoming readier to talk. But he could not betray his friends. Better to let them
drown
him first. Though the two of them would have their fill of pleasure before killing him.

His eyes bulged. He felt pressure mount behind them, as though they were being pushed out from inside his skull. His throat was tight, his lungs burning. He longed to open his mouth, to let the water rush in. He could not resist any longer. He had no name, no mind, only this need to breathe. His jaw flew open like a released spring and he gulped, sucking in death, drinking the cold stream, even while his chest popped and his limbs jangled, his body violent in its reaction.

The woman removed her foot and he bobbed back up beneath her, like a cork on a piece of netting. Thankful to be alive, he gasped at the air and immediately vomited into the stream – no holding it back this time. The woman laughed, moved away, made a few disparaging remarks in Italian about Goodluck’s virility.

‘Why do your people watch us?’ she demanded. ‘Speak, and save yourself!’

He fought with the sweet, alluring impulse to tell these two everything he knew, to void himself of all those secret, hidden facts they sought – his true name, his master’s name, the places where he had spied that year, the names of all the men he had ever worked with.

‘I came into the forest … when I heard—’

‘Lies, mere stories!’ the woman hissed. ‘Do not trust him, look at his eyes. He knows more than he is saying, this one. It’s time to cut him, Alfonso. Cut him until he talks.’

Goodluck received a violent kick from behind and would have tumbled again, hands still bound behind his back, head first into the stream – except that his shoulder caught the bank and flipped him sideways on to a sharp rock. He fell awkwardly, half turned on his back to stare up at the stars through the leafy branches overhead.

Then he heard a splash.

Alfonso swore under his breath and knelt beside him on the muddy bank, reaching out awkwardly into the water.

The clumsy young fool had dropped something.

With an effort, Goodluck lowered his gaze to examine the curl
of
the young man’s beard, the paleness of his skin emphasized by dark eyes and hair. For a moment, he found himself thinking of Lucy, her coarse black hair always tucked inside a demure hood these days, and remembered her as a young girl, running free in his sister’s garden, her unbound hair wild as a holly bush about her head. How she had laughed as he chased her.

Regret filled him, swelling his chest with unshed tears. He had hoped to see Lucy married to a good man and know her happy and content, to do a father’s duty by the girl. Instead, he would die tonight at this young fool’s hands, and never meet her children.

His wrists, playing the rope against the sharp rock beneath him, seemed a little wider apart now, no longer bound so tightly.

Then Alfonso was leaning back on his knees, turning towards him again, lips curved in a cold smile. In his hand, a treacherous-looking knife dripped, gleaming in the starlight.

‘Now to finish this.’

Fifty

ELIZABETH KNELT AT
her prayers, head bent, hands clasped before her. To her right, Lady Mary sighed deeply, and young Swedish-born Helena, never one for lengthy devotions, fidgeted to her left. Elizabeth herself was not over-keen on too long a communication with the Lord but she was not yet ready to lie down. Indeed, she feared a long night of restlessness lay ahead; her mind was too busy for sleep, incessantly working over the problems of the day even while she was readied for bed. Her ladies had slipped a nightgown over her head, brushed her wig until it shone, and cleansed the whitening paint from her face and throat.

Outside the high leaded windows, the wind had begun to howl about the castle, growing stronger every minute. She could hear distant shouts and the sound of a bell tolling somewhere below in the castle grounds.