The Tudor Secret

by C. W. Gortner

  He’s taller than you, but not by much. He has a pointy face, like a ferret.

  “We meet again,” I said, just before a burly henchman emerged from the shadows and hit me in the face.

  * * *

  I could barely make out the way before me, my left eye throbbing, my jaw aching from the blow, as I was marched with arms twisted behind my back past crumpled structures and through a ruined cloister into a dank passageway. Rusted iron gates hung like dislocated shoulders from doorways. We descended a steep staircase into another passage, descended yet again. The passage we now entered was so narrow two men could not walk abreast. A lone pitch torch crackled in a peeling holder on the wall.

  The air smelled fermented. I had to breathe deep of it, reminding myself not to give in to panic. I must concentrate, observe, and listen, find some way to prolong my survival.

  We came before a thick door. “I hope you’ll find your accommodations agreeable,” said Stokes as he slid back the bolt. The door swung outward. “We want only the best for you.”

  Inside was a small circular cell.

  His ruffian shoved me inside. Slime coated the uneven flagstone floor. Skating on my boots, hands splayed before me, I skidded into the far wall. The smell in here was rank; a sticky, moldering substance on the wall adhered to me like crushed entrails.

  Stokes laughed. He stood under the flickering light of the torch, his cloak parted to display his stylish garb. I saw a gem-studded stiletto on a thin silver chain at his waist. I’d never seen anyone wear the Italian weapon before. Unlike the earring, I assumed it was not for display.

  He clucked his tongue. “I daresay no one would recognize you now, Squire Prescott.”

  As my shoulder throbbed from where I’d hit the wall, I felt fury rush through me. I righted myself, surprised by my own outward composure. “You know my name. Again, not fair play. Who are you? What do you want with me?”

  “Aren’t you the nosy one? No wonder Cecil likes you.”

  I hoped my jolt of fear didn’t show. “I don’t know any Cecil.”

  “Yes, you do. You earned his interest in a record span of time, too. And as far as I know, bedding boys isn’t his taste. I wouldn’t say the same for Walsingham.”

  I lunged. Stokes flung up his arm, unsheathing and aiming the stiletto at my chest in one elegant movement. “If I miss,” he said, with a quivering laugh, “which is most unlikely, my man outside will disembowel you like a spring calf.”

  Breathing hard, I moved back. What had gotten into me? I knew better. “You wouldn’t be so confident if we were evenly matched,” I told him.

  His face darkened. “We’ll never be evenly matched, you miserable imposter.”

  Imposter. Did he mean spy? I went cold. He was the Suffolk hireling, my mystery stalker. I was certain of it. How much had he overheard of my meeting with Cecil? If he’d learned enough to unmask the secretary, then whatever Cecil planned could flounder, fail.

  “I’m Robert Dudley’s squire,” I ventured. “I have no idea why you think I know this Cecil or why I’d pretend to be anything else.”

  “Oh, I do hope you’re not going to play the innocent when she gets here. That will not do. No, not at all. False modesty never impressed Her Grace. She knows all too well why you were brought to court and why Cecil shows such interest in you. And she’s not pleased. She does have the Tudor temper, after all. But you’ll learn that soon enough.”

  With theatrical flair, he waved his hand at me. “Don’t go anywhere.” He yanked the door shut. A bolt outside it shot into place. Pitch darkness plunged over the cell.

  In all my life, I had never been so afraid.

  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 Prescot
t, 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 abomin
ation.”

  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.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I shouted until I had no voice left. I couldn’t believe I would end like this. It was unthinkable. I wanted to roar the walls down into rubble, dig my way out with my bare hands, knowing now how a slaughterhouse animal must feel, waiting for its executioner.

  Without realizing what I was doing, I started to pace. It was astounding how much had fallen into place—astounding and appalling. My arrival at court must have been premeditated, orchestrated by Lady Dudley to force the duchess into relinquishing her place in the succession. And if this was true, then Lady Dudley knew something about me. She’d taken me into her care because of it. The woman who disdained and humiliated me, set me to cleaning her stables, ordered me flogged when I sought to read a book—she held the secret to my past.

  Il porte la marque de la rose.…

  A wave of desperation overcame me. I fought not to give in, reminding myself that everything could be an illusion, a manipulation. In my pain and anger, as I sought to make sense of the senseless, I didn’t pay heed to the subtle changes in the air around me, to the mounting gurgle that signaled the beginning of the end, until I heard water seeping across stone, felt its cold touch swirl about my feet.

  And I reeled around to see a black torrent gushing in through the wall grate.

  I stood, petrified. The flow grew stronger, faster, bringing a smell of rot and sea, gushing in with unstoppable force as the flooding tide funneled through underground conduits into the small cell. In a matter of minutes, the entire floor was awash.

  I backed to the door. There was no latch or keyhole; several furious kicks confirmed that breaking it down was not an option. Fear tightened about my chest. The overflow from the river would keep pouring through that grate until it filled the room to the ceiling.