“You said she was afraid of Anne Boleyn,” I said, and I heard him step to me, so close we might have embraced. His face looked ancient, the marks of worry, of ceaseless statecraft and insomniac nights, engraved into his flesh.
“Maybe Anne wasn’t the only reason,” he said, and he started to reach out. Before he could touch me, I shifted away, though it felt more like lurching, so leaden were my limbs. The chamber closed in around us, shot through with random afternoon light and stark long shadows.
“How did you find out about me?” I asked abruptly.
“Entirely by coincidence.” His response was certain, subdued. “As I said, Henry the Eighth’s testament decreed that after his children and their heirs, his sister Mary’s issue stood next in line to the throne. So when I learned that the duchess had renounced her claim in favor of her daughter Jane Grey, I was surprised. Frances of Suffolk never renounced anything willingly in her life. Northumberland informed me she had done so in exchange for Guilford as a spouse for Jane, but not even he seemed convinced. I decided to investigate. It wasn’t long before I learned that Lady Dudley had threatened Frances with something altogether more interesting.”
I gave him a hollow smile. “Me.”
“Yes,” he said, “though I didn’t know exactly who you were at that time. I didn’t begin to put it together until I learned Lady Dudley had presented you to the duchess in the hall, where she whispered a comment about the mark of the rose. Now, that caught my attention: The Rose was Henry the Eighth’s affectionate nickname for his younger sister. You of course had already told me when we met that you were a foundling, but you also spoke of a woman you’d lost, who cared for you. I knew from Fitzpatrick of the herbalist Lady Dudley had brought to treat Edward, and so I started to put the pieces into place. It still took me time to figure it all out, but the conclusion, once I recognized it, was irresistible.”
I was floundering, fighting against the unraveling of my own self.
“And it was…?” I managed to utter. Silence ensued. For the first time, Cecil wavered, as if he debated whether or not to continue.
The cruelty of the game finally unhinged me.
“TELL ME!” My dagger clattered to the floor as I grabbed him by the doublet and rammed him hard against the wall. “Tell me this instant!”
In a low voice Cecil said, “You are the last son of Mary of Suffolk. The herbalist, Mistress Alice—the Suffolk household accounts show she had been in service to the late duchess; she attended her at Westhorpe in June of 1533. And years before, Lady Dudley had attended her as well, in France when Mary went to wed King Louis. These three women knew each other, and each was connected to you, the foundling whom Lady Dudley had brought to court to use against Frances of Suffolk.”
With a strangled sound that was part moan, part sob, I released him. I staggered back, plunged back to that day years ago when Lady Dudley had taken the book of psalms from me. I saw its frontispiece in my mind, the handwritten dedication in French in that elegant feminine script. I had not understood, though it too had been with me, all along.
A mon amie, de votre amie, Marie.
That book I had stolen and carried with me in my saddlebag belonged to my mother. She had bequeathed it to a favored attendant—a lady who accompanied her during her brief time as queen of France, a lady she must have trusted, one she had called friend.
Lady Dudley. She had betrayed my mother’s memory to further her own terrible ends.
Grabbing hold of the nearest chair, I threw it across the room. I wanted to tear the roof down about our ears, scour the walls to ashes, rip off my own skin. I spun back to him, enraged, my fists clenched and held before me.
He didn’t shift a muscle. “Strike me if you must. But it won’t return what was taken from you. I may be guilty of many things, but I did not do this. I did not steal your birthright. Lady Dudley did; she concealed it. She used and murdered your Mistress Alice for it.”
I was beyond reason. An abyss opened beneath my feet, full of horrors I did not want to see. Of Lady Dudley, I could believe anything, including this monstrous deed. But my poor Alice … How could she have left me in ignorance, all these years? How could she have not realized that, in the end, what I did not know might be the one thing used against me?
“Alice cared for me,” I heard myself whisper, as if I needed to convince myself. “She kept me safe.… They mangled her, tethered her like a beast, only to kill her in the end.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “They did. And she endured it, out of love for you.”
I looked at him. “Is that what it was? Love?”
“Never doubt it. Mistress Alice gave her life to you. She took you from your dying mother, from the sister who wanted you dead, and brought you to the one place where she thought you’d be safe. She couldn’t have known what would occur; no one could have foreseen it, all those years ago. But she must have suspected enough about Lady Dudley to take steps to protect you. Your name alone proves it.”
I thrust out a hand. “No more. Please. I—I cannot bear it.”
“You must.” He shifted from the wall. “You must accept the treachery and the lies, and you must overcome them. Otherwise, it will be your undoing.” He paused. “She named you Brendan not because of her reverence for the saint but because it is the Latin form of the Irish name Bréanainn, which is derived from ‘prince’ in ancient Welsh. Mistress Alice gave you your legacy from the start. It has been with you all this time.”
“Then why?” Desperation edged my voice. “If Mistress Alice knew who I was, why didn’t Lady Dudley kill her the moment she brought me to her? Why did she wait so long?”
He went quiet for a moment before he said, “I can’t say. All I can think of is that she depended on Alice’s complicity. Any servant could raise you as one belonging to the lower class, and that was the illusion Lady Dudley had to create, that you belonged to no one. But servants gossip; word could get out about you. We can assume Lady Dudley knew you had to be hidden from Frances of Suffolk, and she needed someone to care for you whom she could trust. Alice would do both, so Lady Dudley took the risk that one day she might tell you the truth. At the time, there was no pressing need to do otherwise. You were still a babe; you could die, as many do. Nobody knew how the succession would resolve itself, but a secret like you could prove invaluable. Absolute silence was required—silence and the patience to wait.”
He paused, watching me. My heart pounded in my ears. There was more; I could feel it uncoiling just beneath the surface, shedding its brittle false skin.
Then Cecil added, “Of course, there is another possibility. Perhaps Lady Dudley did not kill Mistress Alice at first because she knew Alice had confided in someone else; someone who would reveal your existence should anything happen to her. If so, then between Alice and this other person, Lady Dudley found herself cornered; she did not dare act impulsively, at least not until she found her opportunity when King Edward fell ill.” He paused. “Is there anyone you can think of whom your Mistress Alice might have trusted with so dangerous a secret?”
I went still, recalling Stokes’s words: But something happened in those last hours; Mary of Suffolk must have confided in the midwife, said something that fostered her mistrust.…
And then Mary Tudor’s: Charles of Suffolk’s … squire came to see me. A stalwart man …
I wanted to bolt from the room, run as far as I could. I didn’t want to know anymore. There would be no peace for me, no hiding. I’d be condemned to search until the end of my days.
But it was already too late. I knew how Alice had protected herself: with my birthmark, which another servant caring for me would see. And I also knew whom she had confided in. Like everything else, it had been there all along, waiting for me to learn enough to see it.
I shook my head in response to Cecil’s question. “No, I don’t. And it doesn’t matter. Mistress Alice is dead.” I hardened my voice. “But I know this much: You have no proof. There is no proof. I intend t
o keep it that way.” I met his eyes. “If you ever tell another soul, I will kill you.”
He chuckled. “I’m relieved to hear it.” He adjusted his doublet, walked past the broken chair to his valise as if we’d been discussing the weather. “Because the revelation of your birth could create complications that would be most unfortunate for all concerned—especially you.”
Raw laughter burst from me. “Is that why Walsingham was on the leads with a dagger? Given the uncertainty surrounding the succession, I must have presented a terrible hindrance!”
“You were never a hindrance.” Cecil draped his cloak about his shoulders. “I underestimated your ingenuity perhaps, but I had no intention of letting you die, in my service or otherwise.” The gravity in his tone took me aback. “If you consider the events, you’ll see that when you first arrived here, all I had was an unfounded rumor and knowledge of an herbalist who had once served Mary of Suffolk. I couldn’t possibly have known everything beforehand.”
As if I were back in Whitehall the night of Elizabeth’s arrival, I heard that cryptic whisper: Il porte la marque de la rose.
I couldn’t rage anymore. I couldn’t fight. “Not until someone confirmed it for you,” I said. “That’s why you had Walsingham follow me, isn’t it? To see if he could catch me undressed. The mark on my skin, the mark called the rose—it would have proven everything.”
He inclined his head as though I’d offered him a compliment. “I have no further secrets from you. Now, we can work together toward a cause greater than both of us—the cause of Elizabeth, who, I assure you, will soon face a challenge far worse than any Dudley.”
“I didn’t say I wanted anything more to do with you,” I replied.
He smiled knowingly. “Then why, my dear boy, are you still here?”
Chapter Twenty-nine
It was late afternoon when we emerged from the house. Having never been on a barge before, I had to concede it was the preferable way to travel when in London. Though the river surface was peppered with flotsam I didn’t care to examine too closely, exuding an acrid aroma that clung to one’s clothes, the periodic tides that washed in ensured the Thames remained cleaner than any city street and far more navigable. I was amazed by the speed with which the hired boatman, half drunk as he was, propelled us toward that great stone bridge spanning the river, over which ran the main road from Canterbury and Dover.
The cakelike structure was perched on twenty cramped piers, ornamented with a southern gatehouse and roofed with teetering tenements. As I gazed up, Cecil said, “Some people are born, live, and die on that bridge without ever leaving it. When the tide is full, ‘shooting the bridge’ can be quite an experience, if you survive it.”
The boatman grunted, displaying a toothless grin, and catapulted the barge with nauseating force through one of the bridge’s narrow vaulted arches. I gripped the edge of the wood seat, my belly in my throat. Catching a churning swell on the other side, the barge reared up and down like a leaf caught in a maelstrom. I tasted vomit.
I would stick to my horse henceforth.
We entered steady water, sailing toward a breathtaking view of a mirror-still tidal pool, where anchored galleons swayed against the lowering sky. The Tower brooded at the far end, guarding the city approach. Though I couldn’t see them, I was certain cannons protected every inch of those river-lapped walls. In the waning sunlight, the Tower’s weathered stone was tinted with a rusty hue like blood, confirming its repute as a foreboding place no one should willingly enter.
Cecil said, “You needn’t do this in person. There are many ways to deliver a letter.”
I stared at the central keep mortared in white, its four turrets tipped with standards. “No. She deserves this much, and you owe it to me.”
Cecil sighed. “Ingenious and headstrong. I hope you understand we can’t overstay our welcome. I’ve no idea what to expect after I relay the queen’s orders; regardless, in a few hours, curfew will be upon us and the Tower gates will close. Whoever gets locked inside, stays inside.”
The barge docked. Cecil stood. “Pull down your cap. Whatever you do, don’t speak unless you have to. The less they see and hear of you, the better.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” I muttered.
We mounted the water steps, turned past an open field to a gatehouse, where an alarming number of guards patrolled the entry into the Tower. I heard the muted roar of lions, lifted my hooded gaze to the edifice rising before me. Crenellated battlements studded with barbicans thrust into the sky, shielding the white keep.
A guard stepped forth. Cecil pushed back his hood to reveal his face. The guard paused. “Sir William?”
“Good day to you, Harry. I trust your wife is doing better.” Cecil’s voice was as smooth as the tidal pool shimmering below us. I hunched my shoulders, watching the guard from under my cap, which I’d yanked down about my ears. I was glad for once for my slim build and modest height. Dressed in my worn traveling gear, I looked like any other servant accompanying his master.
“She’s on the mend,” the guard said, with evident relief. “I do thank you for asking. Those herbs your lady wife sent served us in good stead. We are indebted to Lady Mildred and you for your kindness.”
I had to smile, despite my mistrust of Cecil and his wiles. Trust him to have sowed a debt where it most mattered by offering medical assistance to a Tower guard’s wife in need.
I heard him say, “Absolutely not. Lady Mildred will be pleased to hear her panaceas worked. She’s ever tinkering with her recipes. By the way, Harry, I forgot to collect some papers when I was here yesterday.” He motioned to me. I bowed. “This is an apprentice clerk of mine. Would you mind letting us through? We’ll only be a moment.”
Harry looked discomforted. “I’m afraid I can’t, Sir William.” He glanced over his shoulder at his companions, who were engrossed in a game of dice. “My lords Pembroke and Arundel gave strict orders to let no one in without their express leave.” He moved closer to Cecil in confidence, his voice lowering to a whisper. “A missive from the Lady Mary arrived this morning. My lords left at once for the earl of Pembroke’s house. Rumor has it, she’s threatened to send the lot to the block if they don’t declare for her by tonight.”
“Indeed?” said Cecil, as if the news were of no particular account. “Rumors say so many things these days; one hardly knows who or what to believe anymore.”
Harry chuckled uneasily. “Aye, it’s like a gander of goodwives around here lately. Still, what with all this talk of mutiny at Yarmouth and the duke’s army up and deserting him, a man need be careful with what he does, if you understand my drift?”
“I do, most certainly,” replied Cecil, and he remained quiet, a subtle smile on his lips, his manner so disconcerting in its tranquility that it prompted Harry to blurt, “Before they left, the lords even ordered Lady Jane and Lord Guilford confined to their apartments for their own safety. Lady Dudley was beside herself. She threatened Lord Arundel with a dire end when her husband returns. My lord wasn’t exactly civil in return, if you get my meaning.”
He paused, searching Cecil’s expression. “Some say his lordship of Northumberland cannot win. I’m not one for gossip, Sir William, but if it’s true, I’d appreciate fair warning. I’ve my own to see to, as you know, and truth be told, I only follow orders. I rightly don’t mind who sits the throne as long as I can feed my wife and children.”
“Naturally.” Cecil set a hand on Harry’s arm, a gesture so imbued with understanding for a lackey’s circumstances that Harry visibly started. “I don’t think we should be discussing this in the open,” Cecil added, and he drew Harry into the gatehouse shadow, where they conversed out of my hearing. I saw him slip Harry one of his ubiquitous pouches.
When Cecil returned, I hissed, “What is he talking about? What missive? The queen entrusted me with her letter, and I gave it to you less than an hour ago.”
“It appears yours wasn’t the only one she sent.” He smiled thinly
. “I had to bribe Harry for more information and to let us through, so save your questions for later.”
He walked forward briskly, nodding to the other guards, forcing me to hasten after him like the menial I was supposed to be. We passed under the iron portcullis, into the outer ward.
Cecil halted, pretending to adjust his sleeve, his valise clutched in one hand. In a hushed tone he said, “Mary has learned a thing or two, after all. She dispatched a duplicate of her orders via another courier, along with the news that she’s amassed thousands to her cause. She prepares to march on London. The more sensible lords on the council have retreated to debate her reception; Suffolk went with them. More telling, his wife the duchess has departed for their country manor. It seems all those involved save for Lady Dudley have abandoned Jane and Guilford. Both are here, in the same rooms where they were scheduled to await their coronation.”
He looked about, drew a quick breath. Again, I was struck by the turns and twists of these past few days, that I must now rely on the very man whom I’d considered my foe only hours ago.
“I believe the council will declare for Mary by this evening at the latest,” he said. “As soon as they do, anyone still inside these gates will most likely not leave until she deigns it. Are you certain you still want to proceed? I for one would rather not take the chance. The Tower is no place for an extended stay.”
I regarded him. “You sound afraid. I didn’t think you capable of it.”
“You’d be afraid, as well, if you had an ounce of sense,” he retorted. He squared his shoulders, assuming his suave aura of invincibility as if it were a well-worn coat. “Come, then. Let’s get this over with.”
We strode onward toward the keep.
* * *
I barely had time to reflect on the fact that I was in the infamous Tower of London. The murmur of the Thames at the water gates echoed through the inner ward, magnified by the breadth of unrelenting stone walls. Guards, pages, and functionaries rushed to and fro, attending to their business without a smile to be seen among them, adding to the claustrophobic air.
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