Maid of Deception

by Jennifer McGowan

  “I will tell you plain, I think the Queen’s decision had less to do with me and more with your countrymen.” I sighed, canting my head to the right in a way I knew presented the curve of my jaw to best effect.

  It served its purpose. Alasdair went very still, watching me. “My countrymen?” he asked. “What role do they play in this?”

  “Elizabeth is just so nervous about all of you.” I fluttered my hand vaguely to the north, as if in one gesture I could encompass the whole of the Scottish kingdom. “She sees the rebellion gathering steam, but also the violent and prolonged opposition from the Catholics. And with more Scots now in Windsor than we’ve had in an age, she is ill at ease, wondering who is her friend and who her foe.”

  “The Scots are here for one thing alone, and that is English arms and support,” Alasdair said flatly. I almost caught my breath, and it was all I could do to not betray the quickening of my heart. Would it really be so easy as this? I could tell Cecil—Walsingham—the Queen. I could be done with all of this and married within the fortnight. I stared into his eyes, willing him to spill all of his secrets like so much cheap wine. “Our intentions are not so cloaked as those of you Englishers,” Alasdair continued. “If you wish to know something for your Queen, m’lady, you have but to ask.”

  Then his smile turned into more of a leer, and he leaned forward to speak words that only I could hear. “But I’ll tell you plain. There will be a price for the information.”

  Despite myself, I jerked back. “What sort of price?” I asked, trying and failing this time to mask my reaction. “You cannot mean, sir—”

  When his grin just deepened, I felt the outrage spill out of me.

  “No!” I hissed, forgetting myself entirely and placing my hands squarely on his broad chest, shoving him back. “Sir, you go too far! I refuse to be treated like some wayward tavern girl and have you disrespect me as if I were the rushes beneath your feet. I will not have it!”

  Alasdair tilted back his head and howled with laughter, the sound loud enough to draw the eyes of even the most raucous of the market day rabble. I jumped up from the bench, blind with anger, but no sooner had I turned away than he was right there with me, turning me back to him as tears fairly streamed down his face, his body shaking with mirth.

  “Well done, well done!” he managed, his voice low and resonant. “You’ve met my only condition, my lady. I will tell you all you wish.”

  That caught me up short. “What do you mean?” I demanded. “I will not be trifled with, good sir.” Not this day, and certainly not by you.

  “I do not trifle, my lady,” Alasdair said, lifting a thick hand to brush the tears away from my eyes that I hadn’t realized I’d allowed to surface. “I sought only to see your first true emotion, one not laced with guile or artifice. You’ve satisfied my request, and to spare. I now know you can express genuine anger. And never have you been more fine.”

  “I—” I stopped, mystified. How can I respond to that? I hastened on. “I need to know of your loyalties, Alasdair. Do you support the Protestant cause, or are you allied with the Catholics? You are at no risk in either case. The Queen is ever tolerant, especially of those who are not her God-given subjects, but—”

  “Shh, m’lady. Doona trouble your heart about me, at least not on this account. The MacLeods and all we tarry with do not want French rule. That is really the issue here, for me and mine. Our God is our master, and we will worship him as we see fit, but the French will never own us, as long as we draw breath. For that reason alone do we support the rebellion, and all the men committed to its cause. And I will tell you this much more, fair Beatrice. A MacLeod will never back down from his word, nor change his heart once it is given. He will never swerve in duty nor steadfastness, and he will always protect his own.” He eyed me with a piercing gaze, his face suddenly intense with the fire of his fealty. This was a young man who knew what he wanted. Who, once committed, would not stray from the course. This was a young man who lived by his heart.

  Where did that thought come from?

  “Is that what you wanted to know?” Alasdair recalled me from my reverie, his words naught more than a whisper now, but as loud as thunder in my ears. I stared back at him, momentarily unable to speak. Then the breath returned to my lungs, and wits to my brain. I favored him with my archest of smiles.

  “That’s what I wanted to know,” I said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next several days passed quickly enough, and I was happy to be able to avoid Alasdair as I bent myself to the Queen’s service.

  Jane reported when the Lords of the Congregation arrived—a string of men and horses approaching the castle under cloak of darkness, who were then hastened off to the heavily guarded Visitors Apartments, none of the hundreds of castle inhabitants the wiser. A few of their number departed just as quickly, then approached with all public fanfare the following day. We assumed the “public” members of their party allowed the closeted Lords access to what was going on in the court proper, and passed information back and forth. There was also the usual collection of guards, thick-necked Scotsmen who kept to themselves, dressed in matching dun-colored tunics, belts, and loose-cut breeches. Really, you would think they’d try a little harder to make a statement if they were here to save all of Scotland.

  Even though the Lords had taken pains to hide their faces, with Jane’s keen eye and Anna’s knowledge of the peers of the Scottish realm, by nightfall we knew which Lords had traveled to Windsor. And it appeared that the one Protestant I was most keen to see had thought the wiser of showing his face in an English court.

  John Knox had earned no blessings of our Queen.

  A strident and outspoken proponent of Protestantism, the clergyman Knox would ordinarily have cultivated Elizabeth’s favor. But while she had still been a princess with Queen Mary upon the throne, the reverend had “anonymously” printed a rather unfortunate booklet detailing his true opinions of ruling Queens, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.

  Even though he had not included our Elizabeth in his disdain for female monarchs, since she hadn’t been one at the time, he was doomed. The Queen could carry a grudge like no other. Knox would never openly gain her goodwill.

  As morning broke, bright and fair, we were gathered off the Queen’s Privy Chamber in a room that had until quite recently served as our schoolroom. With the current, endless round of celebrations to mark and honor the Queen’s birthday, the room now generally served as one of the few places where we could go and know we would not be overheard. This day, however, we’d been called here specifically by the Queen, and even I was curious to see what the summons might mean.

  “Think you that Cecil knows the Queen has called us here?” Anna mused, sitting at the long table in the room’s center. “We’ve already reported to him all that he has asked about the arriving Lords.”

  Meg glanced up from her small leather-bound book, where she was working through the cipher that Anna had created for her. “Cecil is still in his chambers,” she said. “It seems this is a play scripted only by the Queen—even Walsingham has no hand in it. It will be interesting indeed to see what it is we learn this day.”

  “True enough,” grunted Jane, but I was still eyeing Meg and her journal. The book had been a gift to Meg from her long-lost parents, who had apparently been spies in their own right for old King Henry, Elizabeth’s father. As Meg finished unraveling each passage, she would share it with us. I envied her being able to learn of her parents this way, only the parts they saw fit to write down in an extended letter to their then-baby daughter. Far worse to see your parents in every moment of their imperfections. By now my mother at least had returned to Marion Hall, while my father remained behind at Windsor, no doubt to drink his way through any open cask of ale that he could find.

  “The Queen knows only that there is much she doesn’t know, and it is infuriating her,” Sophia said, her lyrical voice cutting through the gloom of the chamber lik
e a beacon of light. She held up a thimble to peer at it, one I’d not seen before. “She draws us here to regain the advantage against her foes who are yet her friends.” Then she let the thimble fall from her fingers, picking up instead one of my fans; a magpie looking for treasures to line her nest.

  Anna’s head had come up sharply at Sophia’s first words, and now she shot a glance to me. I read its meaning instantly. That was one of Sophia’s clearest predictions yet, and not expressed in the dreamy swoon that had so signified her earlier visions. Sophia turned to me as well then, but the beautiful girl’s face stopped me cold.

  It was . . . Blank was the only way to describe it. Like a page of unblemished parchment, open and vulnerable, her eyes large dark violet pools. She looked centuries older, her expression wiser, sager than any I’d ever seen on Sophia’s face.

  “Sophia?” I asked carefully, and took a step toward her. Jane rustled by my side, having come away from her perch in the shadows at Sophia’s first words as well. “Sophia, can you hear me?”

  “Deception upon deception covers you over, shadows your heart,” she murmured directly to me, “but love so deeply buried can tear your world apart.”

  What is this? I quickly took the final steps toward Sophia, gathering up her hands in mine as my fan fell away. This wouldn’t do at all.

  “Sophia!” I said, not sharply but with the tone I used to roust the scrabbling children of Marion Hall from their daily fisticuffs. It served; Sophia’s eyes cleared instantly, and color returned to her cheeks.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, the relief evident in her eyes. “Beatrice. I had the most curious thought about—”

  “Well, you’re back now, and that’s what’s important,” I soothed, talking over her words and keeping her focused. “Now look placid. The Queen is on her way, and she’ll want to believe you are fit to serve.” As if that were possible. Of all of us, Sophia seemed the least fit to serve, no matter how prescient her ramblings. And what on earth had she meant about a buried love? The only thing buried about me, and not all that deeply, was my eternal disdain for—

  “The Queen!” Anna said from the doorway, where she’d drifted.

  And it was true. We could hear the long strides of Her Royal Unbearableness sounding down the corridor, and were barely in our places before she swept into the room.

  We sank into our dutiful curtsies as she surveyed us all, not speaking. As ever, I found myself counting out the long seconds in my mind until we could rise.

  The Queen lasted only five counts. “Up with you. We don’t have time for that,” she barked, and we popped back up like corks on the open sea. She surveyed us with grim approval.

  “You all have conducted yourselves well in my service, and by your troth you are pledged first to me,” she said. She gave a glittering wave, flashing the jewels that adorned her sleeve and wrist, and I suddenly felt the weight of the ring on the second finger of my own right hand. The Queen had extended her protection of us, ensuring that Cecil and Walsingham—though they could order us about at will—could not accuse us of any crime or put us to questioning that might result in our own harm, unless the Queen herself was present. It was a neat solution to a problem that had already presented itself. Meg had known a secret of the Queen’s, and she hadn’t shared it with Cecil and Walsingham. To express their displeasure, they’d imprisoned her.

  Given the secrets I myself knew of the Queen, of which Cecil and Walsingham had no idea . . . I could appreciate Elizabeth’s decision to ensure that her Maids of Honor need only answer to her, and not to her advisors.

  I slanted a glance at Meg without appearing to do so, and saw her straighten ever so slightly under the Queen’s regard.

  Meg had suffered more than any of the rest of us at the hands of the Queen’s advisors. I hadn’t liked the girl much when she’d arrived at our door, a dirt-smudged thief of no appreciable merit other than her light fingers and quick mind. But she’d done the best she could, I supposed, and for reasons quite beyond me, she seemed in awe of our Elizabeth. Even now her eyes shone with a curious light, as if the Queen filled her whole world. I didn’t know the secret Meg had learned about the Queen, though I could guess. That Meg remained loyal to the woman was the important part, however.

  Our resident thief thought Elizabeth would set her free one day, but as God was my witness, if Meg didn’t stop adoring the woman, the Queen would never let her go.

  “And so now I will give you a commission that is to me alone. You are to tell no one of this, neither guard nor lord nor”—her lips curled slightly—“advisor. Do you understand?”

  We murmured our careful assents, and the Queen nodded imperiously. “Good. This night marks the first of a three-day revel culminating my birthday festivities.” And it’s about time too. The Queen will be rapidly coming up on her next birthday if she doesn’t leave off celebrating this one soon. “As you know, there are several new nobles from Scotland in our midst who do not know the castle and its people well. I need you to circulate among them and learn just what is being discussed when I am not present in the Visitors Apartments.”

  “The Visitors Apartments?” interjected Anna, perturbed. “You believe you are not being fully briefed on the negotiations with the Lords of the Congregation?”

  “It is not a matter of belief; I know I am not,” Elizabeth snapped. “I cannot spend the whole of my day closeted with those jabberers. But neither do I imagine that it takes hours upon hours of Cecil’s time to result in the scant updates he is providing me. I want to know what they are asking him that they are not asking me, and what he is granting in return.”

  Even I was shocked by that. Cecil could not grant the Queen’s grace without her knowledge. It was career suicide for him and potentially treasonable as well.

  “But he will serve you long and well,” said Sophia, in that curiously dead voice of hers. “All your policies his to tell.” Careful, girl.

  “Of course he will,” I said quickly to draw Elizabeth’s attention away, my tone breathless with ardor. “Cecil would be mad not to do your bidding, Your Grace, or to serve you to the fullest of his ability.” The Queen was so startled that her gaze swerved off Sophia and rested upon me, her manner instantly hardening.

  “And what of you?” she asked. “I notice you have not been following MacLeod so closely as I would like. What use are you to me if you do not obey my command?”

  Let me be the first to say it: I really hate the Queen.

  “Your Grace,” I said, bowing to both compose my face and to curb the sharpness of my tongue. I lifted my head again and spoke with soft assurance. “As I have already shared with you, I learned all that may be useful when the learning was needed—MacLeod and his men have no religious fervor to speak of, but they well and truly despise the French. In that you have their staunch support. If your needs require me to question them further, I will of course begin again at once.”

  “Hmm,” she returned, still scowling at me. “Do that. Find out if the Scottish Highlanders would respond to an English call to arms against the French. Not that I can imagine the French would last long that far north, but they are a tiresome lot.”

  She turned her gaze to my right. “And you, Meg. I need to verify that what my advisors are telling me is all that they are being told and not some abridged account. But I cannot ask such questions myself, precisely. Not with Cecil and Walsingham dogging my heels at every step. You say you are an actress. Could you take on the role of the most important woman in England?”

  Beside me Meg gave a quick grin. “I am almost of a height as you, Your Grace, and can make myself seem quite like you indeed. With your meanest castoff costume and a borrowed wig—” Meg tilted her head then and placed her hands upon her hips in a perfect imitation of the Queen, as though she were still a member of the Golden Rose acting troupe that had brought her into our fold—a gaggle of men, women, and children who were all consummate actors . . . and unrepentant thieves. “I cannot spend the whole of my day closeted
with those jabberers,” Meg said severely, mimicking the Queen’s tone and cadence precisely. “But neither do I imagine that it takes hours upon hours of Cecil’s time.”

  “Ah!” The Queen clapped her hands together, for once looking like the young woman I always forgot she was. I resented Meg for liking Elizabeth so well in that moment, though I knew it was uncharitable of me. Meg did not chafe so much as I under the Queen’s constant demands.

  Then again, Meg had never been sent off to giggle over boorish Scotsmen with wandering eyes. And hands.

  “I approve,” Elizabeth continued. “The Festival of the Moon will provide us ample opportunity for you. You will dress as me, Meg, and go into the crowd, seeking out any members of the Scottish delegation whom we suspect to be the Lords of the Congregation. Once you gain their ear, ask them plainly what they need of me. I will be curious to know if their requests match those Cecil has shared with me, or if he is hiding something.”

  “I understand,” Meg said, and the Queen nodded again.

  “There has been a flurry of horsemen arriving today, and I suspect messages will be sent back and forth. I would know them for myself, before Cecil has a chance to refashion their contents to words he considers more palatable to my ear. See that you are ready to act as me, and to report all that you hear.” She paused then, and glanced back to Meg, as if expecting something more than Meg had already given.

  “Of course, Your Grace,” Meg said, curtsying for no apparent reason. She had a habit of that, but it seemed to please Elizabeth.

  “Excellent.” The Queen crossed her arms and surveyed us again, including even me in her approving gaze. “We’ll learn what there is to be learned, and not rely upon the accounts of men who think they know more and better than we do,” she said, a thread of defiance in her words. “We begin tonight.”