Maid of Deception

by Jennifer McGowan

  So we ducked into the Blue Room, and I made quick work of checking the tapestries. Sophia went to the windows that looked out onto the North Terrace, and opened them wide. A playful breeze skittered in, with just the tiniest bite to it. Winter would be drawing down all too soon, I knew. But at least we could breathe in the fresh air in this room, preserved from the elements.

  Sophia paused a moment there, her eyes far to the north. “What troubles you, Beatrice?”

  I hesitated. The Queen had forbidden me to speak of what had transpired between myself and the six hooded Questioners, but if Sophia herself had seen aught of it, well . . . that was another thing entirely, was it not? “Why don’t you tell me my troubles?” I asked gently.

  Sophia bit her lip. “Six men in hoods?” I nodded, and she swallowed. “They questioned you. A-about me.”

  I nodded again, and she put her hands to her ears. “It is coming to pass—it is coming to pass,” she hissed. “Oh, Beatrice, there is danger all around!”

  “The Queen has no interest in your being singled out by these men, Sophia,” I said firmly, wanting to ease her however I could. “She will not allow them access to you.” Only to me, I thought. “But you must have a care. You have spent your entire life in the house of John Dee, and he has enemies.”

  “I have not spent my entire life with him.” Sophia’s eyes were fixed on the wide forest, and I paused to consider her words. She had been taken from a loving father and mother—by whom? And given to Dee—why? The story at court was that Sophia was Dee’s niece, but what was the truth of the matter?

  Then Sophia disrupted my thoughts by turning to me in a rush. “Can you teach me, Beatrice?” she asked. “Can you teach me to stand like you, to walk like you, as if no one can reach you and no one should try? Can you show me how to be a lady in this court with cool assurance, and how to not act”—her voice broke on her final word—“fey?”

  “Of course,” I said immediately, though in truth I was shocked by the question. Shocked and . . . more than a little intrigued. Anna could delight in romance, Jane in death. I’d take court politics anyday. “And Anna can teach you how to respond to your questioners—be they official or otherwise, while Meg can teach you how to read the crowd, to know their actions before they even know them themselves.” I smiled a little, thinking on it. “And if all else fails, I think Jane now knows how to kill someone with her toes.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Sophia sighed, then seemed to gather strength. She looked at me in the way I had come to associate with one of her trances, but before I could bring her back to reality, words began spilling out of her. “You are far more gracious to me than you have any idea. A light will follow you where’r you roam. I don’t care what I see around you; I refuse to believe it. There is no way so much fear and crushing sadness will surround someone so strong as you.” With that, she bounced back and hugged herself, then turned and fled the room—though, where she was going, I could not fathom. I suspected not even she could say. Hopefully she’d end up in the Queen’s chambers, however. Eventually.

  Still, I stared after the girl, stupefied, until I finally found the voice to speak into the now empty space.

  “Fear and crushing sadness?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I was making my way to the Queen’s chambers when Walsingham intercepted me in the hallway.

  “Lady Beatrice,” he said formally, bowing to me in full view of the guards. “Walk with me?”

  “But of course, Sir Francis.” I took his proffered arm and fell into step with him, not at all surprised when he angled me away from the Queen’s apartments, though more than a little chagrined. I was not quite up to an interrogation this early in the morning, especially by someone so skilled at the art. As if sensing my discomfort, Walsingham patted my hand with almost fatherly commiseration.

  “I understand congratulations are in order,” he began smoothly. “The Queen informed us of her decision to wed you to the favorite son of the clan MacLeod. Your father was not quite as taken aback as I expected him to be.”

  The comment cleared away my malaise, and I grimaced with wry amusement. “My father is rarely taken aback, unless he must visit ‘aback’ to find his stash of ale.” Still, I could not keep myself from asking the next logical question. “How did he receive the news of my betrothal?” I asked.

  In response Walsingham just clucked his tongue. “Your father, if nothing else, is a practical man. He never once betrayed concern, and through his intercession, I am sure, the Scotsman managed to keep up a level of decorum as well.”

  I closed my eyes briefly just thinking on it. As much as I would have wanted to see Alasdair’s face when he was informed of the Queen’s “generous” offer, I would not have handled it well if he’d laughed. Or fainted. Or argued with her. “Was Alasdair . . . surprised?” I asked.

  “No, interestingly enough,” Walsingham said. “Though he has been among us but a short while, I get the impression that the lad has taken his measure of our Queen and her court, and simply resolved to survive the experience.”

  “Well, that is good,” I said faintly. I’d never considered myself an “experience” that someone must “survive,” but I supposed there could be worse things. “So he accepted the Queen’s decision?”

  “After a fashion,” Walsingham said. Then we turned down a less peopled corridor, and the very air around us seemed to close in. “But I do not interrupt you this day to talk about your wedding, Beatrice, as charmed as you might be by the Queen’s manipulation of your life.”

  It took all my training not to stiffen. “I do not know how to take your meaning, Sir Francis.”

  “Oh, I do not doubt for a moment that you know how to take it. I understand you walked with the Queen late last night. Where is it you were heading?”

  “Is this some sort of test, Sir Francis?” I asked, leaning away from him so I could face him more directly. “If you know that we were together, would you not also know where we arrived?”

  “I would, except—and this is curious—the Queen had her own guards roaming along behind her, sweeping up onlookers like old rushes and tarrying with them until she was well out of sight. One might almost expect that the Queen had puzzled out that she was being watched, even in her own castle.”

  “Oh, my. She would have to be a suspicious soul to believe that,” I said, my tone as lightly mocking as his. Walsingham had also grown up in the courts of kings. He very well knew that you could not trust even your own shadow, for fear that it would tell your secrets if the price was high enough.

  “And yet I find that no one was able to track Her Grace until you were both seen returning to her royal chambers. At that point you left quickly enough, but I would know what you had shared with the Queen, Beatrice. Your spying activities are of no use to England if they are not bent to the proper service.”

  “Indeed, Sir Francis.” My brain should have been scrambling, but the fatigue from the previous evening was still preying hard upon my focus. I decided that the best lie, in this case, was the most outrageous one. “Oh, very well,” I sighed. “The Queen wished to pay a visit to the Viscount Grimley.”

  “She what?” Walsingham rewarded my duplicity with an impressive amount of shock. “The Viscount Grim—”

  “Pray, Sir Francis, have a care.” I held up a hand to silence him. “This is not information I would have noised about. The Queen was very particular about being discreet.”

  “Well, I should say,” huffed Walsingham. “Viscount Grimley?” he asked again, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “Of the Cotswold Grimleys?”

  “ ’Tis what she said.” Viscount Grimley was fifty years old if he was a day, and so racked with perennial illness that even his bones coughed when he walked. He was a sharp-witted man, which is why the Queen suffered him in her court, but he made everyone uncomfortable just by entering a room. “She bade me wait outside his chambers while she entered, but in truth she did not remain there overlong.” I could perhaps
have chosen a more attractive pigeon to draw Sir Francis’s attention, but Grimley would serve. Still, it would be smart to color the insinuation with just enough smoke that if the Queen had to defend it, she could. She would not thank me for it, but I could always point out that I chose such an unappealing suitor for her precisely to give her protestations of innocence that much more weight.

  “And what was her . . . demeanor upon leaving the viscount’s chambers?” Walsingham asked, his voice faintly strangled.

  “Satisfied,” I said. I could not deny the faint curl of pleasure in my stomach at the images I was evoking. It served the Queen’s spymaster right for trying to follow his own Queen. And it was not the first time I’d spun one lie about the Queen to protect her from a more damning truth. “But I cannot think this conversation interests you truly, Sir Francis. What more word have you from the north—that you can share with me?” I gazed at him guilelessly. “I know now you will not tell me any tales you have not already told the Queen, but I would know what intrigues I’m marrying into, as it were.” Does he know that Alasdair was in the cellar room of Marion Hall with the Lords of the Congregation? And if so, will he tell me?

  Walsingham tightened his lips, but seemed to come to a conclusion to tell me something rather than nothing at all. “If we are sharing confidences, Beatrice, understand this: We would know the Queen’s moods,” he said. “She appears to trust you once more, and you have gained her ear.”

  Ah. So this would be how it would go between us. Whether he liked it or not, Walsingham knew I now had somehow earned the Queen’s friendship anew. He would tell me his tales of almost-truths in exchange for any secrets I learned about the Queen.

  Tedious, but not surprising.

  I nodded to him gravely. “I want only what is best for England,” I said, and that response seemed to please him.

  “The Lords of the Congregation have returned north,” he said. “The Queen has pledged her aid to them, as it serves England to keep the French away from our Scottish neighbors.”

  “Do you know the timing for such an intercession?” I asked, my tone low and careful.

  He eyed me. Perhaps I’d been a bit too careful. “As early as Twelfth Night, and as late as Easter.”

  “That seems wise timing indeed.” I slanted him a look. “And now it is my turn to share a confidence, just as soon as I have one to share.”

  Walsingham released me then, and I stepped away from him, noting that he had returned me to the Queen’s Privy Chamber, that I might take up my mantle as dutiful maid and tricked spy. “I appreciate your time, Sir Francis,” I said. “I will watch the Queen.”

  He sketched me a short bow, his smile bland even as his eyes were mirror bright. “And I will watch you, Beatrice,” he said.

  Not closely enough, as it turned out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Alasdair was waiting for me in the Queen’s chambers. I wasn’t entirely surprised. If I were the Queen, I would have also wanted to see my enemy’s face when she first encountered her downfall. I managed to gaze serenely and without particular interest in Alasdair’s general direction, before presenting myself to the Queen.

  Elizabeth, true to her word, was not going to formally announce my betrothal to the court quite yet. But the whispers about it would still have all of Windsor in thrall, which was bad enough. She gazed at me smugly as I lifted out of my curtsy; her glance going from me to Alasdair to my father, whom I now realized was also skulking in the shadows at the back of the room, then back to me.

  It was all I could do not to sigh aloud. Her Royal Tediousness could be very good at subtlety when she wanted to be. This, clearly, was not one of those times.

  “ ’Tis a fine day, is it not, Lady Beatrice?” the Queen asked now, putting a slight emphasis on “fine” in case anyone had missed the significance of her pointed looks.

  “It is, Your Grace,” I said sweetly. I could do sweet. It was the first mannerism I’d learned at court. “And I’m so pleased you are in good spirits.”

  “I truly am.” She lolled back in her throne, her face settling into lines of beatific generosity, and instantly I was on my guard. The Queen was many things, but beatific and generous were not among them.

  This was bad. For all of us.

  Her next words confirmed it. “In fact, I am inclined to indulge my romantic nature today. Let us all adjourn to the Upper Ward and have a lunch en plein air.” She nodded to her servants, who looked faintly aghast, but they melted away immediately, no doubt to alert the cook staff about the Queen’s capricious decision. “Alasdair MacLeod, surely you can assemble your men to join us? The Scots above all people must appreciate a fine autumn day such as this.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” Alasdair agreed, his rich full baritone drawing the curious eyes of the ladies only just beginning to hear the rumors of our pending wedding. I kept a smile on my face, but it was a close thing.

  “Excellent.” Elizabeth nodded. “Perhaps we can have some style of friendly competition. Are your men any good at archery?”

  “Among the best in Scotland, is all.” Alasdair shrugged. A delighted rumble sprang up from the spoiled courtiers, and Elizabeth laughed in that annoyingly false way of hers.

  “Then we shall have to put them to the test. We do not have time to set up a joust, but archery—well. That shall work nicely. But go—go! Enjoy your morning. Perhaps there is a lady you might escort out into the open air for all to see?”

  Oh, God’s bones. I felt my anger mount as the Queen continued her prattle. Alasdair, playing along, chose me as a partner. I curtsied to him with all the grace I could muster, grateful that he hadn’t tried to spare me the humiliation. If he’d chosen another woman, that would have just spurred Elizabeth on to greater ploys to get him to come round to choosing me. And then, inevitably, she’d tease me as being the lesser choice.

  This way the bandage was ripped off my pride roughly and quickly, and then it was done. I beamed up at Alasdair as he took my arm, trying to remember how I’d looked at Cavanaugh just a bare month earlier, all wide-eyed and full of hope and expectation. It seemed like I had been much younger then.

  “You look like you’ve eaten a small bird,” Alasdair noted as we made our escape into the Upper Ward.

  “You could have said no to the betrothal, you know,” I said, suddenly angry at everyone—the Queen, for her meddling. My father, for his weakness. And Alasdair, for acting like becoming my betrothed was just another item ticked off a long list of things to do on his holiday to England, with him still not knowing that I had uncovered him as a liar and quite likely a spy for Scotland. I had no idea what had transpired in his conversation with the Queen, and the not knowing was driving me mad.

  “That would not have served my interests,” Alasdair said, his words infuriatingly bland. He angled us around the gathering crowds. A host of servants were already running about, setting up pavilions on the lawn for the Queen and her retinue, and arguing about where to put the long tables for food so as not to get in the way of any errant arrows.

  The Queen’s guard had also gathered to discuss how long to make the archery rows to demonstrate the true mastery of their skills. With the blithe indifference of someone clearly not used to court intrigue, Alasdair continued to walk us right out of the Upper Ward and along the curve of the Round Tower. There were more benches here, and even trees, but the Round Tower reminded us that we were still safe within the walls of an impregnable fortress.

  Alasdair paused to allow me to sit, then settled down next to me, taking my hands into his.

  I just as quickly pulled them back, unable to stop the sudden clatter of my heart at his audacity. “Good sir!” I said, glancing around. There was no one staring at us, but that did not mean we weren’t being watched. “The betrothal has not been announced as yet. I pray you honor my virtue by not asking for undue a-affection between us, at least until it is announced, if it is announced, which of course it will be.” I was mortified by my little speec
h. Not because it wasn’t the correct thing to say but because I’d stuttered it out like a breathless little girl. Very impressive, Beatrice.

  Alasdair just grinned at me, and his expression was positively wolfish. “You think your Queen is playing politics with this betrothal,” he said. “But as you note, I did not say no.”

  “Which you easily could have done,” I pointed out. “What is your stake in this, that you agreed so readily to marry a foreigner? Are you, too, playing politics?”

  “It would be fitting, no?”

  This of course was no answer at all, but at that moment one of Alasdair’s men approached, his face at once contrite and curious. “Good morning, Niall,” Alasdair said, smiling as he stood. “You have news?”

  “Aye.” Niall ducked a bow to me, like he was still trying to figure out the movement. “If I can borrow ye for a moment?”

  “My lady?” Alasdair turned to me, and I nodded, nonplussed. This was exactly the kind of moment that I should have seized to spy upon them both. But I just sat there like a dullard.

  Meg could have read their lips and pieced together their conversation. Sophia could have discerned their futures with a glance at her obsidian stone. I, on the other hand, was squatting there uselessly, unable to figure out a single thing to do to get the information the two men were sharing. I scanned the Middle Ward, impatient and bored and furious with myself for being so pointless, and that was when I saw it.

  One of the ladies of court was standing off to one side of a nearby tree, her hands clasped together, her manner clearly expectant and waiting. She shot looks over to the brawny Niall with ill-disguised impatience, and I at once realized that she’d taken a fancy to the man. I glanced back at Niall. He was handsome enough, I supposed, though he didn’t hold a candle to Alasdair. Still, he was fair and tall and probably no more than a few years older than Alasdair—perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two. And the lady—I couldn’t remember her name; she was newcome to court, and I’d been busy of late—seemed completely consumed by him.