The Tudor Secret

Chapter Fifteen





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.