The Tudor Secret (11 page)

She burst out laughing, then clapped a hand to her mouth. “You really are too inexperienced for this sort of thing,” she said in a low voice. “I should send you on your way and not tell you a thing. But in the interest of time, no, I am not Walsingham’s doxy. I simply know him because of Her Grace’s acquaintance with Master Cecil. Or rather, I know of him. He’s a professional informant—and if rumors are true, trained in Italy as an assassin.”

“Hence his gallant manner.”

Her smile was tart. “Exactly. He happened to be near me as Her Grace left the hall. I assure you, we exchanged only the required niceties.”

“I suppose you weren’t listening in on her conversations, either?” I said dryly.

“No, that I was doing. She calls me her ears. I’m the reason she need not resort to outright gossip, which would be unbecoming in one of her rank. Before you ask, I also tried to hear your presentation to the duchess of Suffolk. I reasoned Her Grace must have been curious as to why you were brought before her cousin.”

She paused, searching my face. All of a sudden, her expression softened. Her look of compassion startled me with its sincerity. “I realize you have no reason to trust me, but I would never betray her. Her aunt Mary Boleyn, sister to her mother Queen Anne, was my mother’s benefactor. Though we are not related, I couldn’t love her more than if we shared blood.”

“Relatives don’t always love each other,” I said, but I was no longer suspicious. “In fact, most often the opposite seems to be the case.” My voice quavered. To my mortification, all of a sudden I couldn’t control myself. “God help me, I don’t know who or what to believe anymore.”

She was silent. Then she said, “Trust Her Grace. That is why you are here, is it not? She told me you had offered to help her and she refused. Do you know why?”

I nodded. “Yes. She would not see me harmed for her sake.” I hesitated another moment before I handed her the missive. She tucked it into her bodice.

Footsteps came toward us. She went still. There was no time, or place, to hide. Without warning, she flung herself at me, taking my astonished face in her hands to press her lips to mine. As she did, I managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of the figure who stalked past us, followed by the three men, none of whom paused to make comment at what we were doing.

For a paralyzing moment I thought I must have imagined it.

Kate Stafford melded her body to me; she breathed into my mouth, “Don’t move.”

I didn’t. Only after the echoes of booted feet faded away did she draw back. “He’s left her. I must go.” She paused. Her expression was somber. “You mustn’t say a word to anyone. Not even Cecil. If you do, you could place her in more danger than she already is.”

I hadn’t imagined it. “That was the duke. He was with her. Why? What does he want?”

“I don’t know. He arrived before you did, demanding admittance. She was abed, resting. She let him into her audience room and sent us all away.”

I didn’t like the sound of this. “Then I must speak with her.”

“No. It’s not safe. He could return; someone could see you. We can’t risk it. We cannot be exposed. If anyone should know—”

“Know?” I exploded under my breath. “Know, what? What in hell is going on?”

“You will discover all in time. Now I must go.”

She turned away. I followed her to the gallery entranceway. As she made to enter, I touched her shoulder. “Tell her this, from me. Tell her there’s a plot afoot to arrest her sister. She must not meet my master. She must leave now, before it is too late.”

From the gallery came a ringing: “Kate? Kate, are you there?”

The voice immobilized us. Kate pushed me from the entrance, but not before I saw Elizabeth silhouetted against those magnificent far doors, her hand clasping the collar of her crimson robe, her hair unbound. “Kate!” she called out again, and I heard the fear in her voice.

“I’m here, Your Grace! I’m coming,” Kate cried back. “I’ll be right there.”

“Hurry up,” said the princess tremulously. “I’ve need of you.”

She moved forward. Though I had the perfect opportunity at that moment to go to Elizabeth, something held me back. I said, “You will tell her?”

“She won’t listen.” Kate met my stare. “She loves him, you see. She has always loved him. Nothing we say or do will stop her.” She smiled. “Gallant squire, if you truly wish to help her, be at the pavilion tonight with your master.”

She left me standing there, incredulous.

I didn’t want to believe it, though it made perfect sense. This was why she had stayed at court despite every apparent threat to her safety.

She loved him. Elizabeth loved Robert Dudley.

The Tudor Secret

I needed time to sort out my turmoil before I could return to Lord Robert. The palace was eerily still. I saw only menials going about their business, none returning my wan greeting as I wandered Greenwich’s unfamiliar labyrinth of corridors. All the courtiers had retired to their respective quarters or gone to stroll in the formal gardens, it seemed.

I was adrift in a shadowy world.

Brooding engulfed me. I tried to tell myself that despite being the daughter of a king, Elizabeth was still flesh and blood. She was fallible. She did not know him as I did; she did not see the depths of avarice and shallow ambition that ruled his heart. But then, she herself had admitted as much to me. She said only last night in Whitehall that she’d never had cause to mistrust him.

Yet anything less than the truth would bring about her doom.

I reached a grand hall, where servants were laying out carpets, setting up tables, hanging silk garlands over a dais in preparation for the festivities. Those few that paid notice looked at me once and turned away. I stopped, suddenly knowing what I must do.

Shortly thereafter I emerged onto a tree-lined promenade leading into the formal gardens that stretched to a loamy hill. Daylight faded from the sky, scalloping the clouds in scarlet. It looked as if rain were on the way. I took Cecil’s miniature map from my pocket, ascertaining my location. To my disappointment, the map didn’t detail the gardens, and I didn’t have much time before I had to make my way back.

Like most palace gardens, however, these must follow an established pattern. Spacious yet laid out for the court to amble and enjoy without getting lost, wide avenues bordered with topiaries wound past herb patches and flowerbeds before threading off in various directions.

I took one of these narrower paths.

Thunder rumbled overhead. Drizzle began to fall. I stashed the map in my pocket, pulling my cap low on my brow as I looked about. In the distance, I glimpsed what looked like an artificial lake girdling a stone structure.

My heart leapt. That must be the pavilion.

It was farther than it appeared. I found myself traversing the length of a forested mall into a wild, strangely haunting parkland. Glancing over my shoulder, I spied fresh-lit candles in the palace windows. I wondered if Elizabeth herself gazed out from one of them at this moment, deliberating on her encounter with the duke. Or was she thinking only of tonight, of what her rendezvous with Robert would bring? I’d never been in love myself, but from what I knew, lovers pined for each other when apart. Did Elizabeth? Did she long for Robert Dudley?

I regretted I’d not taken the opportunity to tell her what I knew. I might not have relished the deliberate destruction of her romantic notions, but at least she’d arrive at her rendezvous tonight forewarned as to just how high my master aspired.

The rain grew stronger. Turning away from the palace, I quickened my pace.

The lake surrounded the pavilion on three sides. A set of crumbling steps led up to it from the unkempt pathway where I stood. It must have been a lovely spot once, idyllic for dalliances, before years of neglect had rendered it lichen stained and near-forgotten.

Exploring the area nearby, I located, as Walsingham had said, an old postern gate in an ivy-covered wall, leading to a dirt road and the sloping hills of Kent. This gave me pause. Horses could be tethered here out of sight and hearing, if properly muzzled and their hooves bound up in cloth. Had the princess selected this place less out of a sense of irony and more because of its value as an escape route? The possibility lightened my spirits, until a less-appealing prospect occurred to me.

What if this was Cecil’s plan? He may have decided to take advantage of her intention to lure Robert here, a place from which she could quickly, by force, be spirited away. No matter what else the secretary might be doing, it couldn’t serve him to let Elizabeth fall prey to the Dudleys. She was, as he had said, the kingdom’s last hope.

I paused, considering. Now that I was alone, out of the palace and with enough space around me to feel as though I could actually breathe, I realized I had been led about like the proverbial blind man, by my nose. I had accepted Cecil’s proposition, delivered my master’s reply, reported to Walsingham. But I did not know any of these men, not really. Had I become another pawn to be discarded? What if there was more to this elaborate subterfuge than met the eye, more lies twisted within lies? I felt compelled to recall every word that had passed between Cecil and me, to search our verbiage for clues. Somewhere in our conversation lay the answer to this riddle. And I’d best find it.

I froze.

The tip of a dagger pressed into my back, just below my ribs.

A nasal voice intoned, “I wouldn’t resist if I were you. Take off your jerkin.”

I slowly removed my outer garment, thinking of the map folded in my pocket as I let it drop at my feet. My assailant’s blade felt very sharp against my thin chemise.

“Now, the dagger in your boot. Carefully.”

I reached to the hilt and pulled my knife from its sheath. A gauntleted hand reached around to take it from me. Then the voice, which I now recognized, said, “Turn around.”

He wore a hooded cape, his features were concealed.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” I said. “I hardly call that fair play.”

With an effete laugh, he cast aside his cowl. He had a face too sly to be deemed handsome, with prominent cheekbones and in one earlobe, a ruby. His sloe-eyed look pierced me where I stood. How had I not recognized him as the man Peregrine had described?

He’s taller than you, but not by much. He has a pointy face, like a ferret.

“We meet again,” I said, just before a burly henchman emerged from the shadows and hit me in the face.

*   *   *

I could barely make out the way before me, my left eye throbbing, my jaw aching from the blow, as I was marched with arms twisted behind my back past crumpled structures and through a ruined cloister into a dank passageway. Rusted iron gates hung like dislocated shoulders from doorways. We descended a steep staircase into another passage, descended yet again. The passage we now entered was so narrow two men could not walk abreast. A lone pitch torch crackled in a peeling holder on the wall.

The air smelled fermented. I had to breathe deep of it, reminding myself not to give in to panic. I must concentrate, observe, and listen, find some way to prolong my survival.

We came before a thick door. “I hope you’ll find your accommodations agreeable,” said Stokes as he slid back the bolt. The door swung outward. “We want only the best for you.”

Inside was a small circular cell.

His ruffian shoved me inside. Slime coated the uneven flagstone floor. Skating on my boots, hands splayed before me, I skidded into the far wall. The smell in here was rank; a sticky, moldering substance on the wall adhered to me like crushed entrails.

Stokes laughed. He stood under the flickering light of the torch, his cloak parted to display his stylish garb. I saw a gem-studded stiletto on a thin silver chain at his waist. I’d never seen anyone wear the Italian weapon before. Unlike the earring, I assumed it was not for display.

He clucked his tongue. “I daresay no one would recognize you now, Squire Prescott.”

As my shoulder throbbed from where I’d hit the wall, I felt fury rush through me. I righted myself, surprised by my own outward composure. “You know my name. Again, not fair play. Who are you? What do you want with me?”

“Aren’t you the nosy one? No wonder Cecil likes you.”

I hoped my jolt of fear didn’t show. “I don’t know any Cecil.”

“Yes, you do. You earned his interest in a record span of time, too. And as far as I know, bedding boys isn’t his taste. I wouldn’t say the same for Walsingham.”

I lunged. Stokes flung up his arm, unsheathing and aiming the stiletto at my chest in one elegant movement. “If I miss,” he said, with a quivering laugh, “which is most unlikely, my man outside will disembowel you like a spring calf.”

Breathing hard, I moved back. What had gotten into me? I knew better. “You wouldn’t be so confident if we were evenly matched,” I told him.

His face darkened. “We’ll never be evenly matched, you miserable imposter.”

Imposter. Did he mean spy? I went cold. He was the Suffolk hireling, my mystery stalker. I was certain of it. How much had he overheard of my meeting with Cecil? If he’d learned enough to unmask the secretary, then whatever Cecil planned could flounder, fail.

“I’m Robert Dudley’s squire,” I ventured. “I have no idea why you think I know this Cecil or why I’d pretend to be anything else.”

“Oh, I do hope you’re not going to play the innocent when she gets here. That will not do. No, not at all. False modesty never impressed Her Grace. She knows all too well why you were brought to court and why Cecil shows such interest in you. And she’s not pleased. She does have the Tudor temper, after all. But you’ll learn that soon enough.”

With theatrical flair, he waved his hand at me. “Don’t go anywhere.” He yanked the door shut. A bolt outside it shot into place. Pitch darkness plunged over the cell.

In all my life, I had never been so afraid.

The Tudor Secret

I closed my eyes, drew in slow even breaths. I let my eyes adjust to the gloom. Gradually the darkness lightened, shadows peeling from shadows. Judging from the chill, I determined I was underground. I could also discern the murmur of water nearby. Was I near the river?

I crept around the cell. I didn’t like what I found. Despite the wet algae on the floor and walls and the overall unpleasantness of the place, there were no droppings or other signs of rodents, though rats must infest Greenwich as they did every place where food could be found. There was a wide barred grate at the base of one wall by the floor; crouching down to look beyond that black hole I found a miasmic stench and clearly heard the gurgling water. I also discovered that although I could scratch clumps of mortar from the grate’s crevices, it was solid.

I must be under the ruins of the old medieval palace, perhaps in an ancient dungeon. But we’d come a distance from the lake, and not enough rain had fallen to explain this palpable moisture. Greenwich had been built after the age of feudal warfare. It had no ramparts or defensive moats, as independent-minded lords with armies of vassals were allegedly no longer a threat. Yet the slimy floor and moldering air indicated this cell had been flooded recently.

None of which eased my anxiety.

After circling the cell twice, I thought I knew how a caged lion must feel. Stamping my feet to stir the blood in my legs, I squatted back by the grate. My attempts confirmed that I could not dig or break it out from the wall. Even if the mortar around it could be dug out, the grate loosened or broken, I had no way to do so without a pick of some sort.

I was trapped, while in the hall the festivities for Jane Grey and Guilford Dudley’s wedding would soon commence, and the hour of Robert’s meeting with Elizabeth neared.

I sank to my haunches. I couldn’t have said how long I sat there, waiting. At one point I slipped into exhausted sleep and awoke, gasping, thinking I was drowning in a viscous sea. Only then did I realize that the smell permeating my skin was of river water, and that a muted clamor approached.

I came stiffly to my feet. An exasperated voice declared, “By the rood, Stokes, was there no other place to lock the wretch in?”

“Your Grace,” said Stokes. The bolt slid back. “I assure you this was the only place I could find on short notice that proved suitable to our needs.”

The door opened. Torchlight flooded the cell, blinding me. Seeing only shadows in the doorway, I brought up a hand to shield my eyes. A bulk pushed inside, swatting about with a cane. Then it went still, peering. “Bring in that torch!”

Stokes squeezed in behind the bulk. The torch he carried illuminated what first looked to me like a mastiff swathed in carnelian, a ludicrous pearl-dotted coif perched on its oversized head. I blinked repeatedly, forcing my one eye to focus. The swollen one had completely shut.

Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, glared back at me. “He looks smaller. Are you certain it’s him? It could be someone else. Cecil is wily. He’d substitute his own mother if it would further his cause.”

“Your Grace,” said Stokes, “it’s him. Let my man handle this. It’s not safe.”

“No! I am not some lily-livered girl. If he so much as looks at me the wrong way, I’ll bash in his skull and be done with it.” She blared at me, brandishing her stout silver-handled cane, “You! Come closer.”

I advanced as calmly as I could, making certain to stop far enough away to evade an unanticipated swipe at my head. “Your Grace,” I began, “I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. I assure you, I have no idea how I’ve offended.”

The end of her cane stabbed out, missing me by an inch. She guffawed. “Well, well. He has no idea. Did you hear that, Stokes? He’s no idea of how he’s offended.”

“I heard, Your Grace,” twittered Stokes. “An actor he most certainly is not.”

The cane slammed down. “Enough!” She lumbered to me. I had to stop from flinching. During my wandering through Whitehall the night after Elizabeth left, I had come across a portrait of Henry VIII, his gross ringed hands on his hips, bulging legs apart. Standing face-to-face now with the late king’s niece, I found the resemblance daunting.

“Who are you?” she asked.

I met her vicious stare. “Begging Your Grace’s pardon, I believe we were introduced. I am Brendan Prescott, squire to Robert Dudley.”

I choked on a cry. With savage accuracy, her cane slammed up between my legs. I doubled over as white-hot pain seared off my breath. Another whack brought me gasping to my knees, my groin pulsating in agony.

She stood over me. “There, that’s better. You will kneel when I address you. You are before a Tudor, daughter of Henry the Eighth’s beloved sister Mary, late duchess of Suffolk and dowager queen of France. By all that is royal in my blood, you will show me respect.” She jabbed my concaved shoulders with her cane. “Again, who are you?”

I gazed up at her contorted visage. Her mouth turned inward, like a venomous bloom. “Seize him.” Stokes’s henchman, who was broad as a wall and twice my height, lumbered in. He hauled me up, pinioning my arms. I didn’t have the strength to struggle, limp from the pain of her blow to my genitals.

Stokes asked, “Shall we start with kicks to his ribs? That tends to loosen the tongue.”

“No.” She didn’t take her eyes off me. “He has too much to lose, and Cecil has no doubt paid him well for his silence. I don’t need him to say anything. I have eyes. I can see. Some things cannot be forged.” She stabbed her hand at me. “Strip him.”

Stokes handed her the torch and tore off my chemise. “He has very white skin,” he purred.

“Get out of my way.” She shoved Stokes aside, thrusting the torch at me. I tried to recoil, but the henchman’s grip manacled my wrists. Her eyes scoured me. “Nothing,” she said, “not a mark. It’s not him. I knew it. Lady Dudley has deceived me. That she-bitch forced me to surrender my claim to the throne for nothing. By God, she’ll pay for this. How dare she set her drunkard of a son and my own mealy-mouthed daughter above me?”

My blood congealed.

“Perhaps we should be thorough,” Stokes suggested. He instructed his man, “Turn him around.” The henchman started to pivot me. As he did, to my horror, I felt my breeches slip a notch, over my hip.

Silence fell. Then a hiss escaped her. “Stop.” She thrust the torch at me again. I clamped down on a cry as the flame singed my skin.

“Where did you get that?” she said haltingly, as if she couldn’t trust her own sight. I hesitated. Pain speared through my shoulders and across my chest as the henchman yanked up my arms farther.

“Her Grace asked you a question,” Stokes said. “If I were you, I’d answer.”

“I—I was … born with it,” I whispered.

“Born with it?” She reared her face at me, so close I could see tiny broken veins threading her nose under her powder. “You were born with it, you say?”

I nodded, helplessly.

She met my eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

Stokes peered. “Your Grace, it does look like—”

“Yes, I’m certain. It’s not him. It cannot be.” She handed Stokes the torch, grabbed back her cane. “If you want to save that pretty white skin,” she said, her fist clenching about the silver handle, “you’d best tell me the truth. Who are you, and what has Cecil paid you to do?”

I felt nauseous. I had no idea what to say. Should I spill out the truth, as I knew it, or pretend to know something I didn’t? Which was more likely to keep me alive?

“I am a foundling,” I said. “I … I was raised in the Dudley household, brought here to serve Lord Robert. That is all.”

I sounded like I was lying: I heard in my own voice the terrified justification of a man caught in an illicit deed. She of course knew it. It was why I was here. Whomever she believed I was had frightened her enough to have me followed, abducted, and, if I didn’t find a way out of this nightmare soon, killed.

Nevertheless, I’d caught her attention. “A foundling?” she repeated. “Tell me this, were you truly left in the priest’s cottage near Dudley Castle?”

Without taking my gaze from hers I nodded, a shard in my throat.

“Do you know who left you there? Do you know who found you?”

I swallowed. A dull roar filled my head, like an ocean in my brain. I heard myself say as if from across a vast distance, “I don’t know.… Mistress Alice, the Dudleys’ housekeeper and herbalist, she—she found me. She took me in.”

I gleaned something in her eyes. “An herbalist?” Her stare was a physical instrument, a probing device in my sinews. “A small woman with a merry laugh?”

I began to tremble. She knew. She knew Mistress Alice. “Yes,” I whispered.

The duchess of Suffolk took a jerking step back. “It can’t be. You … you are an imposter, tutored by Cecil, paid for by the Dudleys.” Her next words issued in a scalding torrent. “Because of you, they forced me to hand over my daughter in marriage to their weakling son. Because of you, I am humiliated in my God-given right!”

She paused, her voice horrifying in its resolve. “But I am not so easily fooled. I’ll see this kingdom destroyed before I let that Dudley woman and her spoiled brat triumph over me.”

And as I hung there by my arms, all of a sudden it made perfect, dreadful sense.

Stokes let out a gleeful twitter. “Why, Your Grace, I do believe he speaks the truth. He truly has no idea of what they’re doing with him. He doesn’t know who he is.”

“That remains to be seen,” she snapped. She angled her cane level with my face, clicked the handle. A sliver slid from its bottom tip—a concealed blade, thin enough to pop an eye out.

“See how fine it is? I can slide it between two sheaves of paper without leaving a mark. Or I can cut through boiled leather.” She angled the cane down until it grazed my groin.

I heard Stokes giggle. I met her stare. I had one last chance. Ignorance might save me.

“I do not know of what Your Grace speaks. I swear it to you.”

For a moment, doubt blurred her expression. Then the savage cunning returned, and I knew it was over.

“They’ve taught you well: You play the innocent to perfection. Maybe you are what you say, a wretched unfortunate trained to be used against me. Cecil could have told Lady Dudley the story, seeded the idea that would give her the weapon she needed.” The duchess’s chuckle rattled in her chest. “He’s capable of that, and much, much more. It’s a devious game they play, each to their own end. They’ll die for it by the time I’m through with them. They’ll regret having ever crossed my path and made a fool of me.”

She went still. The expression that came over her was unlike any I’d seen—a dark mask lacking empathy or compassion. “As for you, it doesn’t matter who you are.” She swerved to Stokes. “I’ve wasted enough time. When will it be done?”

“As soon as the tide rises. The court will be on the gallery watching the fireworks.” He snickered. “Not that they’d know. No one’s been down here in years. It reeks of papist vice.”

I saw it then, in all its clarity, each thread a part of the whole. While the festivities in honor of Guilford and Jane Grey’s nuptials distracted the court, Robert—deprived by his father of what he believed was his right to win a royal bride—would meet with Elizabeth. Deluded and misled, blinded by his overwhelming ambition, he had only empty words to offer her.

The duke had no intention of letting him wed the princess. Jane Grey was his weapon now, a perfect pawn of Tudor blood, bride of his malleable youngest son. Two hapless adolescents were to be England’s next sovereigns, while Elizabeth and her sister Mary were slated for the scaffold.

The henchman swung out his arm, delivering a clout that sprawled me onto the floor.

“No more of that,” said the duchess. “It must look as if he wandered off by himself. No wounds, no bruises that can’t be part of his death. I want no indication of foul play.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Stokes said, as I crawled from them. My cheek was cut, the blood spurting hot on my bruised face. Through a blur I saw her swerve about and lumber to the door.

“Your Grace,” I called out. She stopped. “I … I would know the reason for my death.”

She glanced at me. “You were never meant to live. You are an abomination.”

She trudged out, the henchman behind her. Stokes tripped to the door. Before he closed it he said, “Don’t hold your breath. You’ll die much faster—or so I’m told.”

The door slammed shut. The bolt clanked over it.

Alone in the darkness, I began to shout.

The Tudor Secret