The Tudor Secret

Chapter Twenty





I plunged feetfirst into the river. I had kept my body pointed like a blade, knowing that if I hit the surface any other way I would certainly die. Still, it was like falling into slate, the impact yanking all air from my lungs with terrifying suddenness. I gasped, flailed to the surface. The brackish taste of salt mixed with dregs and mud clogged my nostrils, my throat, my ears. I coughed it out, trying to gain control of my floundering body.

The river flowed all around me, a swift current flooded by the tidal influx, its inky back littered with branches and leaves. A bloated corpse of something bobbed nearby, sank briefly, and resurfaced. Caught in the current, the corpse and I were like flotsam, dragged along while I, at least, struggled to stay above water.

My left shoulder had gone numb, as had my arm. Gazing back toward the dwindling palace, I envisioned my would-be assassin staring down in disbelief. I also understood just how far a jump it had been. It was amazing I had survived at all.

And once again I was going to drown.

I struggled to swim sideways against the current, toward a distant cluster of trees on a shore, evading the putrid corpse. I couldn’t ignore how dire my situation had become. I’d been shot, or at least skimmed by a ball, and must be losing blood. The cold had also begun to affect my lungs, making it difficult to breathe and move at the same time. Even while my heart and head roared, somewhere deep within, in that dark place where nothing has consequence, I wanted to stop, go still, drift, and let it all pass.

The shore wavered like a desert mirage. Submerged in an icy, suffocating cocoon, I stared toward it with faltering eyes, my arms inexorably ceasing their futile movements. In a rush of panic, I thrashed my legs, seeking to quicken my blood. Nothing moved. Or I didn’t feel anything move. I kicked again, in desperation. There was something twined about my ankles.

“No,” I heard myself whisper. “Not like this. Please, God. No.”

An eternity passed. I tried to bring my legs up to my unfeeling hands and untangle whatever had wrapped about me. I was feeling better. Strange warmth welled under my skin. The cold had ceased its stinging assault.

I sighed. It was just a skein of riverweed or an old rope.…

That was the last thing I thought before the water closed over my head.

* * *

Rain, intermixed with what sounded like fistfuls of gravel being flung against a rooftop, was the first thing I heard, the first sound that told me I was miraculously still alive.

Cracking open a grit-sealed eye, I tried to raise my head. The pounding in my temples and a wave of nausea told me I’d best stay put.

After the spinning in my head waned, I tentatively lifted the sheet covering me. I appeared intact, though my torso was a mass of contusions. I wore a linen undergarment—not my own—and my bruised chest was bare. When I tried to move my left arm, sharp pain coursed through my bandaged shoulder. I looked up. The room was unfamiliar; sprawled in slumber across the rushes near the door was a silver dog.

“Some watchdog,” I muttered.

As I drifted back to sleep I thought the dog looked remarkably like Elizabeth’s.

* * *

When I next awoke, delicate sunlight drifted in shafts throughout the room. The dog was gone. I also found, to my relief, that I was both less stiff and less sensitive, and I could sit up, albeit with much clumsy maneuvering. Easing a pillow under my head, I reclined against the daub wall and prodded my wounded shoulder. It was tender to the touch. Oily salve seeped through the bandage. In addition to tending to my obvious bodily functions, someone had taken the time to dress and treat my injury.

Lying on the bed as afternoon faded into dusk, I glanced from the door to the half-shuttered window. I heard water dripping from gutters. The slant in the ceiling led me to deduce I was lodged in a garret. I wondered when whoever had brought me here would make his or her appearance. I could still remember plummeting through seemingly endless abyss, crashing into black water. I even had a faint recollection of trying to stay afloat, swimming for a time against a sweeping current. After that, nothing. I had no idea how I had been rescued or ended up here.

My eyelids started to droop. I blinked. I couldn’t be certain what I’d find upon awakening. Despite my efforts, I slipped off again, only to be jolted awake by the creaking of the door. I struggled upright. When I saw her walk in, bearing a tray, I stared in disbelief.

“I’m pleased to see you awake.” She pulled up a stool by the bed and set the tray beside it. She wore a russet gown laced over a chemise. Tendrils of lustrous hair curled about her face. I couldn’t believe how, given my state, my loins could react to her proximity. But they did.

She uncovered the tray, releasing the aroma of hot bread and soup.

Water flooded my mouth. “God,” I said, in a hoarse voice I didn’t recognize, “I’m starving.”

“You should be.” Kate unfolded a napkin, leaned over to tie it about my neck. “You’ve been lying here for four days. We were afraid you might never wake up.”

Four days …

I averted my eyes. I wasn’t ready to remember everything.

“And you’ve been here,” I ventured, “all this time … caring for me?”

She broke the bread in chunks over the soup, ladled a spoon, and cooled it with her breath before lifting it to my lips. “Yes, but don’t worry. You look like any other naked man.”

Was I so bruised that the birthmark on my hip had gone unnoticed? Or was she being tactful? A closer look at her didn’t reveal anything, and I was too flustered at the moment to ask.

“This soup is delicious,” I said.

“Don’t change the subject.” She narrowed her eyes. “What on earth possessed you to stay behind in that room, when you should have followed Her Grace and Barnaby? I’ll have you know, we risked our lives waiting for you at the gate. Her Grace refused to budge. She kept saying you’d arrive at any moment, that you knew the woman attending His Majesty and had tarried to question her. It was only when we heard gunshots and saw the duke’s retainers coming out from every doorway that she agreed to leave. She wasn’t happy about it, though. She said it was nothing less than cowardly of us to abandon you.”

“But she did go? She’s safe now, at her manor?”

Kate refilled the spoon. “Safe is a relative term. Yes, it’s been given out that she’s at Hatfield, where she’s taken to her bed with fever. Illness can be a useful deterrent at times like these, as she well knows. Of course, so can the cellars of numerous neighboring houses in Hatfield’s vicinity, any one of which would gladly shelter a princess should the duke’s men be spotted on the road.”

“And you?” I asked. “Why are you not with her?”

“I stayed with Peregrine, of course. He insisted that we look for you.”

“Peregrine found me?”

“He did, on the riverbank. He told us he used to fish the Thames for bodies.” She paused. A slight tremor crept into her voice. “He said we had to keep searching, that in the end everything washes up. He was right. You’d been swept upstream by the tide and appeared near where the river bends. You were soaked through, wounded and delirious. But alive.”

“And you nursed me back to health.” I heard the sullen gratitude in my voice. It had become second nature for me to doubt even my good fortune. “Why? You lied to me about not working for Cecil. Why care if I lived or died, as long as you did your master’s bidding?”

She set down the spoon, dabbed my mouth and chin clean with the napkin. When she finally spoke, her voice was composed.

“I apologize that I didn’t tell you the entire truth. I never meant to put you in danger. My loyalty has always been to Her Grace, though she can be too headstrong and often needs protection from herself, whether or not she cares to admit it. When Walsingham told me that Master Cecil felt it best if we got her away from Greenwich, I agreed to help. I didn’t tell you because he said you had your own orders. He said you had been hired and paid.”

She paused. “I didn’t expect you. But I am glad of it. I … I am glad you are here.”

I observed her face as she talked. I saw what she meant. But as the events of the past days began to seep in, pain and anger arose in me. I didn’t want complications; I didn’t want vulnerabilities or heartache. Feeling something for her would bring me all those things.

“Walsingham gave me instructions, yes,” I replied. “And I was paid. But I also knew that allowing Her Grace to go ahead with her plan to meet with Lord Robert would put her in more danger than she’d incurred already. I’m surprised no one else shared my concern.”

“What would you have had us do?” If she’d detected the deliberate harshness in my manner, she didn’t let it show. “She insisted on questioning Robert about her brother and wouldn’t hear anything to the contrary. None of us could have known that the duke intended to woo her himself or put Jane Grey on the throne if she refused him.”

That made sense. I should rest my suspicions, at least as far as Kate was concerned. She’d not been involved in any plot against Elizabeth.

As if she had read my thoughts, she smiled gently. She knew how to pluck a chord in me, much as a hand knows a lute. In my inept attempt to hide my discomfort, I said the first thing that came into my head: “It’s not fair to test a man who doesn’t have his clothes on.”

She laughed. “You’ve managed well enough thus far.”

I wanted to weep. In some indefinable way, she reminded me of Mistress Alice, of the garnet-cheeked honest girl that Alice must have been in her youth. And as I thought of this, I saw again the triumphant look in Alice’s eyes when she turned to me by the king’s bed. She had been trying to tell me something, but I would never know now.

I met Kate’s gaze. “I thought I was going to die.…” I faltered. Conflict surged again in me, without warning, inundating me in darkness. “Where are we?” I asked in a taut whisper.

“In a manor not far from Greenwich town. Why?”

“Whose manor? Who is here with us?”

She frowned. “Her Grace owns the deed, privately; the house is leased to a friend. Besides Peregrine, you, and me, Walsingham comes and goes. He was here earlier in fact, wanting to know how you— Brendan, what is it? What is wrong?”

I hadn’t realized I had recoiled until I saw the alarm on her face. “That’s who I saw on the leads. Walsingham. He had a dagger. It’s why I jumped. I remember now. Cecil arranged Her Grace’s escape, but he wanted me dead. He sent Walsingham to kill me.”

“No,” she said quietly. “You have it wrong. Walsingham was there to help you. We would never have known where to look had he not told us he’d seen you leap into the river. He even fetched your sword from where it had fallen into the courtyard.”

“Maybe he had no other choice! The sword was evidence I’d been in Edward’s presence. I might survive the fall, as I did.”

“But you still wouldn’t have been found, not in that current. You had a wounded shoulder. There were rope and riverweeds wrapped about your legs. By all rights, you should have drowned.” She paused. “Cecil entrusted Walsingham with your welfare. He’s been watching over you the entire time. That’s why he was on those leads. When we failed to show up at the postern gate, he followed our trail.”

I let out a harsh chuckle. “I wonder where he was when the duchess of Suffolk and her henchman locked me in an underground cell and left me to drown.” Yet even as I spoke I thought of my jerkin, which I’d left by the pavilion and which had inexplicably materialized near the ruined cloister entrance, where Peregrine found it. What had the boy said?

If we hadn’t happened to find your jerkin, we’d never have thought to look …

“Peregrine told us about that,” said Kate. “At the time you were taken, Walsingham was readying the horses we never took. Surely, you can’t fault him?”

“Not unless you take into account that everyone I’ve met at court, not to mention everyone I’ve known since childhood, has proven false,” I retorted. The instant the words were out, I regretted it. Kate bit her lip. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. She stood.

I caught hold of her hand. “No. I’m the one who must apologize. I … I didn’t mean it.”

She looked down at our twined hands, lifted her gaze to me. “Yes, you did.” She unhooked her fingers. “I understand. That woman … Barnaby said she was an herbalist brought by the Dudleys to poison His Majesty. He said you knew her, that they lied to you about her death. How could you not be angry?”

My throat knotted. I looked away, tears burning in my eyes. I didn’t see Kate reach into her pocket, only felt her set something in my hand. When I saw what it was, I went still.

“I found this in your jerkin pocket. I took the liberty of polishing it. It’s a strange thing, but pretty.” She took up the tray, went to the door. “I’ll be back in a few hours with your supper. Try to get some rest.”

The door clicked shut.

I gazed at the gift that Alice had given me. It was a delicate gold petal, its jagged edge indicating it had once formed part of a larger jewel. On its tip, like a perfect dewdrop, was a ruby. I had never seen anything like it. It was the last thing I’d have expected her to possess.

I enclosed it in my hand as dusk faded into night.

When grief finally came to claim me, I did not fight it.