The Tudor Secret

by C. W. Gortner

  Rog wasn’t taking the bait. He’d not removed his suspicious stare from Elizabeth; and just as I felt the situation becoming too strained and that Barnaby and I would have to act, with a thrust of hand as swift as it was inescapable, Rog yanked back the princess’s hood.

  Dead quiet fell. Elizabeth’s pale skin and fiery tresses glowed. The larger guard let out a strangled gasp. “God’s bones, it’s—she—”

  He didn’t finish. Kate threw herself at him, her knife raised in a scything arc. Barnaby and I rushed forward, fleet as hounds. I hadn’t thought we might have to murder these two men, but in the heat of the moment, with my own knife ready, I understood it was exactly what our survival might require.

  I reached Kate as she grappled with the guard, his fist closed about hers, fending off her knife and guffawing as he did it. Grabbing her by the shoulder, I whirled her away and slammed my own fist as hard as I could into the man’s face. I felt my knuckles connect with bone. The guard went down with an audible smash onto the cobblestones.

  I spun around to see Barnaby dodging the sword Rog had yanked from his scabbard. Even as I realized Barnaby’s dagger was no match for the sword and it was only a matter of moments before Rog delivered a lethal blow, I caught sight of a blur of movement, a swish of dark cloak.

  A long white hand came up.

  I heard a wet crack. Rog stood perfectly still. His sword wavered, dropped clattering. He swayed, half turning in disbelief to his attacker. A thin line of blood seeped down his forehead.

  Then he fell, face forward.

  I met Elizabeth’s eyes. The stone she held dropped from her fingers. A speck of blood spattered their tapered length. Kate ran to where the princess stood. “Your Grace, are you hurt?”

  “No. I’ll wager this one, however, will wake with a headache he won’t soon forget.” Elizabeth looked almost in disbelief at the man sprawled at her feet. She lifted her eyes to me. As I stepped to her, Barnaby bent over Rog to check his pulse.

  “He lives,” Barnaby pronounced.

  Elizabeth exhaled. “Merciful God. They were only doing their duty.”

  Kate pushed disheveled hair from her brow, her color high in her cheeks. “What a pair of louts! Can Northumberland find no better than these to do his work?”

  “Let us hope not.” Barnaby took Rog by his wrists and started hauling him toward the tower doorway. I gestured to Kate. “Come, help me.”

  Urgency overcame us. With Kate and Elizabeth lending assistance, we dragged the larger guard through the door into a small round room, such as might be used for storage. A rickety set of stairs spiraled up toward a concave ceiling.

  We lay the guards side by side. I went back to retrieve the sword. When I returned, Barnaby was using his belt to bind each of the inert men’s wrists together, palms facing. He took the handkerchief Elizabeth gave him, ripping it in half and stuffing the pieces of cloth into the men’s mouths. “Not much of a hindrance if they really want out,” he said, “but it should hold them otherwise.”

  “I’ll see they don’t stir.” Kate took the sword from me. “If they so much as breathe too loud, I’ll skewer them like a Mayfair swan.”

  Elizabeth had moved to the staircase. Barnaby stopped her, “No, this way.” He walked around the stairs to the seemingly solid wall. He reached down to lift a flagstone. I watched, amazed, as he pressed a concealed lever with his foot.

  The wall opened outward, revealing an archway. Beyond, another narrow staircase wound upward into cobwebbed gloom. Elizabeth glanced from Barnaby to me. “It’s very dark.”

  “We can’t risk any light,” said Barnaby. She nodded, went to the stairs.

  I motioned Barnaby to follow. “I’ll be right behind you.” Then I turned to Kate. “Are you sure you want to stay here?” I tried to keep my tone neutral, unwilling to admit the personal concern I felt for her, which only a few minutes earlier had driven me at the guard with the intent to kill. I didn’t want to leave her here alone. And I did not like that. I did not want to feel anything for her, not at this juncture.

  She gave me a knowing smile. “Still suspicious, are we?” Before I could respond, she set a finger on my lips. “Be quiet. I know I owe you an explanation, but for now rest assured that I can use a blade for more than peeling apples.”

  I had no doubt she could, but no matter how well she might wield a weapon, she’d be no match for these two should they decide to break their bonds.

  “Don’t fight them.” I looked her in the eye. “They’re the duke’s men. The punishment would be … severe. If it comes to it, make your escape. Find Peregrine and meet us on the road. We’ll find another way to get her out.” I paused. “Promise me.”

  “I’m moved that you would worry,” she replied, still with that ironic smile. “But this is hardly the time to start doubting your allies. Go. You’ve more important things to worry about.”

  I did not argue. Turning away, I stepped into suffocating darkness.

  The passage containing the secret staircase was impossibly narrow, the ceiling angled low, barely high enough to accommodate a man. With my knees bent and shoulders hunched, my hair brushing cold stone, I wondered how enormous Henry the Eighth had ever navigated it. An unwitting gasp escaped me as the sense of space behind me was cut off.

  Kate had depressed the lever and closed the false wall.

  It was like moving up a tunnel. My eyes gradually adjusted. Rats perched on the steps, eyeing me without fear. Elizabeth and Barnaby climbed ahead, single file; I lost sight of them at each turn in the pike. The clammy air was wringing sweat from my brow.

  Suddenly the staircase ended at a wooden door. Barnaby paused. “Before we go in,” he said, “Your Grace should know that Edward … he isn’t the prince we knew. The illness and the treatments have taken a terrible toll on him.”

  She edged closer to me as Barnaby rapped on the door. In the hush, I heard her draw in a quivering breath. Barnaby rapped again. I gripped my dagger.

  The door cracked open. A sliver of light cut across our feet.

  “Who goes there?” said a man’s low, frightened voice.

  “Sidney, it’s me,” whispered Barnaby. “Quick. Open up.”

  The door swung inward, a covert entry masked by the wainscoting of a small but well-appointed chamber. The first thing that struck me was the heat. It was stifling, emanating from scented braziers set in the corners, from a fire burning in the recessed hearth, and from the tripod of candelabra illuminating the scarlet and gold upholstery of the chairs, the curtains at the alcove, and the damask hangings shrouding a tester bed.

  A young man with lank blond hair faced Barnaby, his fine features haggard. “What are you doing here? You know his lordship ordered you away. You must not…” His voice faded. His blue eyes widened. Elizabeth stepped around Barnaby, cast back her cowl.

  I stood behind her. Beyond the breath-quenching heat I began to detect another smell in the air—something very faint but also fetid, barely masked by the herb fumes from the brazier.

  Elizabeth noticed it, too. “God’s teeth,” she murmured, as Sidney dropped to his knees before her. She stepped past him. “There’s no time for that,” she said faintly, moving toward the bed. On a crosshatch a falcon watched, its ankle tethered to its gilded post; candle flames reflected in its opaque pupils.

  “Edward?” she whispered. She reached out to the bed hangings. “Edward, it’s me, Elizabeth.” She drew back the hangings. She gasped, staggered back.

  I rushed to her side. When I saw what she stared at, I went still.

  The stench in the room came from a shrunken figure supine on the bed, the flesh of his emaciated legs and arms blackened, festering. Propped on the pillows like a decaying marionette, only the rise and fall of his chest indicated the young king’s heart still beat. I could not believe anyone in such a state could be conscious. I prayed he wasn’t.

  Then Edward VI’s gray-blue eyes opened, and his anguished gaze, as it rested on us, showed he was fully aware of his
torment and that his sister stood before him. He opened caked lips, struggled to mouth unintelligible words.

  Sidney hastened to his side. “He can’t speak,” he told Elizabeth. She had not moved, her face pared to an alarming transparency.

  “What … what is he trying to say?” she whispered.

  Sidney leaned close to the king’s mouth. Edward’s talonlike fingers gripped his wrist. Sidney looked up sorrowfully. “He begs your forgiveness.”

  “My forgiveness?” Her hand crept to her throat. “Blessed Jesus, it is I who should beg for his. I wasn’t here. I wasn’t here to stop them from doing this … this horror to him.”

  “He is beyond such concerns. He needs you to forgive him. He had no power to gainsay the duke. I know. I have seen everything that has transpired between them, from the day Northumberland began to poison him.”

  “Poison him?” Her voice turned hard, cold. I thought I would never want to be the recipient of the look she now cast. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m talking of the choice, Your Grace, the terrible choice they forced on him. He was ill with fevers; he coughed up blood. Everyone knew that he could not live; he too knew his end was near and he’d made his peace with it. He’d also made his decision about who must succeed him. Then the duke transferred him here and ordered his physicians dismissed. He brought in the herbalist, who began treating him with some mixture of arsenic. He was told it would help him, and it did—for a little while. But then it got much worse.”

  Sidney glanced at Edward, who lay there with his eyes distended in his appalling, skeletal face. “He began to rot from within. The pain became an unending torment. Northumberland was at him night and day, without respite. He signed in desperation, because he could take no more, because they had promised him relief and he was burning in a never-ending hell.”

  “He … he was forced … to sign … something?” Elizabeth had trouble speaking; I could see the veins in her temples. “What was it? What did they make him sign?”

  Sidney averted his eyes. “A device naming Jane Grey as his heir. The duke made him disavow your and the Lady Mary’s claims to the throne. He made him”—his voice lowered to a whisper—“declare you both illegitimate.”

  Elizabeth stood perfectly still. I watched her countenance darken. Then she whirled about, took a furious step toward the apartments’ main door.

  “Your Grace,” I said.

  She paused. “Don’t,” she said to me. “Don’t say it.”

  “Listen.” I moved in front of her.

  A dragging sound grew steadily louder, coming closer and closer.

  “It’s the herbalist,” Sidney said, as if surprised; and as Barnaby leapt to the wall by the door, I drew Elizabeth behind the alcove curtains. I shielded her with my body, the dagger in my hand feeling insignificant as a toy. I tightened my hold, watching the apartment door open.

  A stunted woman limped in. Her ankles contorted inward, displaying livid scars.

  She paused in the center of the room.

  “I told you, it’s the herbalist,” Sidney said again. Barnaby sagged with relief against the wall.

  I looked closer. My entire world keeled.

  Slowly, I stepped out of hiding. I knew it without needing to say a single thing, like a nail driven in my heart. All the blood in my veins seemed to empty. I saw no recognition in the withered face framed by an old-fashioned wimple—a leathery face, almost unrecognizable, scored by suffering. Even as I paused, all of a sudden, beset by a horrible, almost hopeful doubt, the scent of rosemary, of childhood, overcame me. I remembered what Peregrine had said:

  He has that old nurse of his to take care of him.… She came here once … to fetch one of Edward’s spaniels.

  I looked at her for an endless moment. Her eyes were bovine, dull in their resignation. I raised a trembling hand to her cheek, my fingers poised over her desiccated flesh. I was terrified of touching her, as if she were a mirage that might turn to dust. My heart pounded in my ears. If I hadn’t known it was true, that I was seeing her, here, in front of me, I would never have believed this was happening.

  Not after all these haunted, grief-stricken years.

  Behind me Elizabeth said, “You know her.”

  And I heard myself reply, “Yes. Her name is Mistress Alice. She cared for me when I was a child. I was told she was dead.”

  Silence ensued. Barnaby shut the door, planted himself in front of it.

  I couldn’t take my eyes from her, couldn’t reconcile this brittle, ancient figure with the quick-witted woman enshrined in my memory. She’d always been spry, fleet of word and gesture; her eyes had been discerning, bright and keen, not these sunken hollow orbs.

  She had left on a trip to Stratford, as she did every year. A few days to come and go, she’d said. Don’t fret, my pet. I’ll be back before you know it. But she didn’t come back. Thieves had beset her on the road: That’s what Master Shelton told me. I didn’t weep, didn’t ask to see her body or where she was buried. The pain was too intense. It hadn’t mattered. All that mattered was that she was gone. She was gone and she would never return to me. That’s what I’d been told. That’s what I believed. I was twelve years old and bereft of the one person in the world who had loved me. Her loss became an incurable wound that I hid deep within.

  Now the question boiled inside me, with the force of an eruption.

  Why? Why did you leave me?

  But as I took in her appearance, I knew.

  The scars on her ankles—I’d seen the same on mules condemned by unfeeling masters to a lifetime of hobbling about manacled, forced to turn the churning wheels of mills. I let my hand trail to her jaw, as I might soothe a frightened mare. Like a mare she understood. She opened her lips. Her mouth was dark inside. Defiled.

  They had cut out her tongue.

  A scream curdled in my throat. I choked it back as I heard Elizabeth utter, “Is this the woman who has been poisoning my brother?”

  From the bed Sidney replied, “Yes. Lady Dudley brought her here … She gave her instructions, to make the treatments. But … she … she…”

  “What?” Elizabeth snapped. “Spit it out!”

  “Mistress Alice is a master herbalist,” I said. “She cured me of many illnesses in my childhood. She would never have done this willingly.”

  Elizabeth pointed at her brother. “You can say that after what she’s done?”

  Mistress Alice’s misshapen hand tugged at my jerkin. I looked into her eyes. The lump in my chest turned molten. Barnaby acknowledged my warning glance as I turned to where Elizabeth stood. “She’d never do this to any living being, much less to a man—not unless she was forced to,” I said. “She has been hurt, tortured. The duke ordered this done.”

  “Why?” Elizabeth’s voice caught. “Dear God in heaven, why do this to him?”

  “To keep him alive. To gain time,” was my grim reply.

  Elizabeth stared at me. “I can’t leave him here. We must get him out of that bed.”

  “We can’t,” I said, and she took one look at my face and stiffened. “We must go. Now.”

  She glanced at Barnaby. “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  I answered, “Neither do I. But Mistress Alice does. Look at her.”

  Elizabeth did. Mistress Alice had shuffled to the secret door and was motioning to us with unmistakable agitation. Her hands were unbearably twisted, those of a hundred-year-old crone. What they had done to her had stolen years from her life. She was not yet fifty.

  I had to fight back my rage, and returned to Elizabeth. She met my stare defiantly and then turned away and made for the door without a backward glance.

  Barnaby followed. Sidney bolted to a coffer, flung open the lid. He yanked out a jewel-hilted sword sheathed in leather and tossed it to me. “Edward has no need of it anymore. It’s of Toledo steel, a gift from the imperial ambassador. I’ll try and delay them while you get away.”

  I knew instantly from the feel that it had been
fashioned for someone light of build, like me. Only I could never have afforded such a sword on my own.

  Mistress Alice shuffled purposefully to the bed. “See that Her Grace gets out safely,” I ordered Barnaby, and I kicked the secret door shut in his face. Sidney was at the main door. He froze, gaping at me. “Where are you going? They’re almost here!”

  I moved to where Mistress Alice stood at the bedside table, rummaging through a wooden chest—her medicine chest, which she’d stashed on the kitchen shelf, out of my reach. I felt a cold shock as I realized I’d never even noticed it was missing, though she never took it with her when she traveled. Whenever I’d tried to peek inside it, she’d said,

  Nothing in there for a big-eyed curious lad; no secrets for him to see.…

  She turned, gazing at me as if she saw me for the first time. Tears leapt in my eyes as she took my hand. With quivering gnarled fingers, she set something wrapped in oiled cloth in my palm. She folded my fingers over it. I was captivated by the look that came over her face then, as if she had finally found redemption.

  Then the door opened. Sidney was thrust back.

  With her gift in one fist and the sword in the other, I pivoted to meet my past.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She wore a gown the color of armor. Of all those who might have entered through that door, she was the last person I expected to see—though it made perfect sense it should be her. Behind her was Archie Shelton, his scarred face impassive. At the sight of him, I had to stop myself from vaulting forward in fury.

  I heard voices in the antechamber. “Wait until I call for you,” she said over her shoulder, and Master Shelton came in and closed the door. I registered Sidney’s retreat out of the corner of my eye. At my back I felt Mistress Alice go still. I outstretched an arm to shield her, even as I recognized the futility of it. Though she must have been surprised to see me, Lady Dudley’s expression was imperturbable.