The Tudor Secret

Chapter Three





I watched Master Cecil disappear down the gallery before I sucked in a deep breath and turned to the door. I knocked. There was no reply. After another knock, I tried the latch. The door opened.

Stepping in, I found that the apartments, as Cecil had called them, consisted of an undersized chamber dominated by a bed with a sagging tester. Scarred wainscoting adorned the lower half of the walls, and the lone small window was glazed with greenish glass. A lit candle stub floated in oil in a dish on the table. Across the floor were strewn matted rushes, soiled articles of clothing, and assorted utensils and dishes. The smell was nauseating, a mixture of rancid leftover food and dirty garments.

I dropped my saddlebag on the threshold. Evidently, some things never changed. Rooms at court or not, the Dudley boys still lived like hogs in a sty.

I heard snores coming from the bed. I edged to it, my heels crunching on slivers of meat-bones embedded in the rushes. I avoided a pool of vomit by the bedside as I grabbed hold of the tester curtain and tugged it aside. The rungs rattled. I leapt back, half expecting the entire howling Dudley clan to lunge out at me, brandishing fists as they used to do in my childhood.

Instead, I saw a lone figure sprawled on the bed, clad in wrinkled hose and shirt, his tangled hair the color of dirty wheat. He exuded the unmistakable stench of cheap beer: Guilford, the fair babe of the tribe, all of seventeen years old and in a drunken stupor.

I pinched the hand dangling over the bedside. When all I roused was another guttural snore, I grabbed his shoulder and shook it.

He swung out his arms, rearing a sheet-lined face. “Pox on you,” he slurred.

“Good eve to you as well, my Lord Guilford,” I replied. I took a prudent step back, just in case. Though he was the youngest of the five Dudley sons, against whom I’d won more battles than lost, I was not about to risk a thrashing my first hour at court.

He gaped at me, his saturated brain trying to match identity to face. When he did, Guilford scoffed. “Why, it’s the bastard orphan. What are you—” He choked, doubled over to spew on the floor. Groaning, he fell back across the bed. “I hate her. I’ll make her pay for this. I swear I will, that righteous bitch.”

“Did she spike your ale?” I asked innocently.

He glared, forced himself up to clamber out of bed. He had the Dudley height, and I knew that if he hadn’t consumed his weight in ale he’d have pounced on me like a cub with a boil. Instinctively, I slid my hand to the sheathed dagger. Not that I could dare brandish it. A commoner could be put to death for so much as verbally threatening a noble. Still, the feel of its worn hilt against my fingers was reassuring.

“Yes, she spiked my ale.” Guilford swayed. “Just because she’s kin to the king, she thinks she can snub her nose at me. I’ll show her who’s master here. As soon as we’re wed, I’ll thrash her till she bleeds, the miserable—”

A voice lashed across the room. “Shut your miserable trap, Guilford.”

Guilford blanched. I turned about.

Standing in the doorway was none other than my new master, Robert Dudley.

In spite of my apprehension at our reunion after ten years, he was a sight to behold. I had always secretly envied him. While mine was an unremarkable face, so commonplace it was as easily forgotten as rain, Robert was a superlative specimen of breeding at its best; impressive in stature, broad of chest and muscular of shank like his father, with his mother’s chiseled nose, thick black hair, and long-lashed, dusky eyes that had certainly made more than a few maidens melt at his feet. He possessed everything I did not, including years of service at court and, upon King Edward’s ascension, prestigious appointments leading up to a distinguished, if brief, campaign against the Scots, and the wedding and bedding, or vice versa, of a damsel of means.

Yes, Lord Robert Dudley had everything a man like me could want. And he was everything a man like me should fear.

He kicked the door shut with his booted foot. “Look at you, drunk as a priest. You disgust me. You have piss for blood in your veins.”

“I was”—Guilford had turned white as canvas—“I was only saying…”

“Don’t.” Robert spoke as if he hadn’t seen me standing there. He swerved, his eyes narrowed. “I see the stable whelp has made it here intact.”

I bowed. Our association, it seemed, was to take up where we’d left off, unless I could prove I had more to offer him than a hapless body he could pummel.

“I have, my lord,” I replied in my finest diction. “I am honored to serve as your squire.”

“Is that so?” He flashed a brilliant smile. “Well, you should be. It certainly wasn’t my idea. Mother decided you should start earning your upkeep, though if it were up to me I’d have let you loose in the streets, where you came from. But seeing as you were not”—he flung out an arm—“you can start by cleaning this mess. Then you can dress me for the banquet.” He paused. “On second thought, just clean. Unless you learned how to tie a gentleman’s points while mucking out horseshit in Worcestershire.” He let out a high laugh, finding, as ever, great pleasure in his own wit. “Never mind, I can dress myself. I’ve been doing it for years. Help Guilford, instead. Father expects us in the hall within the hour.”

I guarded my expression as I bowed again. “My lord.”

Robert guffawed. “Such a gentleman you’ve become. With those fancy manners of yours, I’ll wager you’ll find a wench or two willing to overlook your lack of blood.”

He turned back to his brother, stabbed a finger circled by a silver ring at him. “And you keep your mouth shut. She’s but a wife, man. Bridle her, ride her, and put her to pasture as I did mine. And, for mercy’s sake, do something about your breath.” Robert gave me a tight smile. “I’ll see you in the hall, as well, Prescott. Bring him to the south entrance. We wouldn’t want him to spew all over our exalted guests.”

With a callous laugh, he turned and strode out. Guilford stuck out his tongue at the departing form, and, to my disgust, promptly vomited again.

It took every last bit of patience I had to accomplish my first assignment in the time allotted. Most of the discarded clothing needed a good soaking in vinegar to remove whatever detritus clung to it, yet seeing as I was no laundress I hid the nasty stuff from view and then went in search of water, finding an urn at the end of the passage.

I returned and ordered Guilford to strip. The water ran brown off his flaccid skin, the raw bites on his thighs and arms indicating he shared his bed with mites and fleas. He stood scowling, naked and shivering, cleaner than he’d probably been since he first arrived at court.

Unearthing a relatively unstained chemise, hose, doublet, and damask sleeves from the clothing press, I extended these to him. “Shall I help my lord dress?”

He ripped the clothes from my hands. Leaving him to wrestle with his garments, I went to my saddlebag and removed my one extra pair of hose, new gray wool doublet, and good shoes.

As I held these, I had an unbidden memory of Mistress Alice smoothing animal fat into the leather, “to make them shine like stars,” she’d said winking. She had brought me the shoes from one of her annual trips to the Stratford Fair. Two sizes too large at the time, to accommodate a still-growing boy, I’d proudly sloshed around in them, until one dark day months after her death, I tried them on and found they fit. Before I’d left Dudley Castle, I’d rubbed fat into the leather, as she would have. I’d taken it from the same jar, with the same wooden spoon.…

My throat knotted. While I had lived in the castle I could pretend she was still with me, a benevolent unseen presence. The mornings spent in the kitchen that were her domain, the fields where I’d ridden Cinnabar in the afternoon, the turret library where I’d read the Dudleys’ forgotten books: It always felt as if she were about to come upon me at any moment, remonstrating that it was time I eat something.

But here, she was as far away as if I’d set sail for the New World. For the first time in my life, I had the post and means to build a better future, and I was skittish as a babe at a baptism.

Recalling this favorite saying of hers, I felt a surge of confidence. She had always said I could do anything I set my mind to. Out of respect for her memory, I must do more than survive. I must thrive. After all, who knew what my future held? Ludicrous as it might seem at this moment, it wasn’t inconceivable that one day I could earn my freedom from servitude. As Cecil had remarked, even foundlings could rise high in our new England.

I slipped off my soiled clothes, careful to keep my back to Guilford as I washed with the last of the water and quickly dressed. When I turned about, I found Guilford entangled in his doublet, shirt askew, and crumpled hose about his knees.

Without needing to be told, I went to assist him.