The Tudor Secret

Chapter Sixteen





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.