The Queen's Secret

by Victoria Lamb

  ‘Why, if it isn’t the Queen’s songbird!’

  He kissed her on the cheek, laying his hand a moment on her simple white coif. Such a beautiful girl, so honest, so natural and vibrant. The thought of those men watching her, pursuing her with evil intent, still had the power to fill him with shaking fury. But now was not the time to be angry. With an effort, he pushed the memory to the back of his mind, smiling down at his ward.

  ‘You only missed the rehearsal. Though I was good. Very good, truth be told. Far better than the others.’ He ducked a leafy twig thrown at him by Twist, turning his back on the fire. ‘So, how is your new life in the bosom of the court, Lucy? Are the great lords and ladies treating you well? It’s been days since—’

  ‘Don’t let’s talk of it,’ she whispered, raising her eyes to his face. Goodluck nodded silently, though he did not like what he saw there.

  Then Lucy smiled, her whole face changing, like a player putting on a new role as he steps out from behind the curtain. She moved past him to the fire where Ned was stirring the pot, almost as though she were eager to put some distance between them. Goodluck did not like to consider what that meant either.

  ‘What’s this?’ she demanded, sniffing the steam. ‘Rabbit? It smells delicious, Ned. No, I’ve already eaten. But I’ll stay and take a drink with you, gladly. And a dance?’

  So it went on, her nervous chatter, her defensive smile. And only Goodluck, who had known her longest, could not smile back, though he pretended to. Sos threw a rope up into the oak, then pulled himself up, quick as a squirrel, into the broad branches of the tree, his lute strapped to his back. There, he balanced the lute on his knee and strummed out a tune for them to dance to.

  In the sunshine, Lucy whirled about the circle of flattened grass with John Twist, light on her feet. She laughed so merrily, Goodluck could almost have supposed he had imagined those shadows in her eyes. But he knew he had not, and he blamed himself for leading her into danger. All her young life, he had striven to keep Lucy away from the perilous work he undertook as one of Walsingham’s agents. Now their two worlds had begun to cross, and his fear was that the men who had frightened Lucy out in the Brays had done so as a warning to him – a warning to keep his nose out of their business.

  ‘Goodluck?’

  ‘Yes?’

  He turned away, glad of an excuse not to dance with her himself. Lucy had changed since he had left England for Italy, had grown up in a few brief years, become a woman. Now that he was back on English soil, he found her different, far more of a challenge. The jokes and rough bear-hugs they had shared when she was a girl seemed to fetch only a wan smile now, and nothing had taken their place.

  Ned was suddenly at his elbow, an odd look on his face.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Ned?’

  Ned cleared his throat. He had always been nervous around young women, and Goodluck could see that Lucy’s presence today had unsettled him. Not that Ned could be blamed for that. Lucy was indeed unsettling, especially in this wild, sparkling mood.

  ‘You never said what you found the other day when you searched Massetti’s room. Anything of significance?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Goodluck muttered. ‘Perhaps not.’

  Lucy gave a shriek of laughter as John Twist spun her wildly about, and Goodluck glanced over his shoulder at his young charge, then checked the rest of the field, reassuring himself that no danger threatened. But why did he still do this? Lucy was grown now, fledged and gone from his guardianship. She had her own friends and a good life at court. It weakened him, this continuing fear for her welfare. He needed to let her go.

  ‘Well, I found this.’ Goodluck fished in his pouch, past the rough pipe and his knife, and brought out the small, misshapen half-circle of metal. ‘It was on the floor under the desk, almost as though someone had dropped it without noticing. What do you make of it?’

  Ned weighed the curved metal piece in his palm. ‘Part of a ring of some kind? Do you think it’s important?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It could be.’

  Handing it back to him, Ned shrugged. He glanced over to where Lucy and John Twist were still dancing. ‘Those men who were after her in the Brays, were they connected to this plot? Will they try again, do you think?’

  ‘Yes to both, I suspect,’ Goodluck admitted heavily. ‘Though as long as Lucy stays close to the court, there should be little danger.’

  ‘Why Lucy though?’

  Goodluck considered the question for a moment, then reluctantly shook his head. However often he thought about it, the pattern on the loom was no clearer. ‘I’m not sure yet. Perhaps she saw or heard something that evening that she ought not to have done, something which might disturb the course of their plot. Or that is what they fear, and wish to guard against.’

  ‘Have you questioned her? She might remember something.’

  ‘That’s the first thing I did when she came to me. Nor was I the only one who questioned her. If she saw anything that night that bears directly on this latest plot against the Queen, either she has forgotten it or she has already told us what we need to know, and we have not realized the significance of her testimony.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What may provide evidence against them may look like nothing to us. Often it is only with hindsight that we see the importance of something that has lain in plain sight the whole time.’

  ‘You suspect the Italian with the bear, do you not? Why not simply arrest the man and have done with it? Then we could get paid and go home early.’ Ned looked away, his mouth twisting. He was not a man to discuss his private life much, so his next words came as a surprise. ‘My wife is due to be brought to bed with another child next month. Our fifth. Her last lying-in was … difficult.’

  Goodluck laid a hand on Ned’s shoulder. ‘I understand your anxiety to be back in London, my friend. But I promise you, this affair will reach its natural end here at Kenilworth. Which is why we must tread carefully. It’s clear that this castle is where they intend to strike, and we must not leap in like fools but hold steady a few days yet. To make arrests now would be to capture only the assassins, and not those minds – and purses – that have shaped this attempt on the Queen’s life. You understand?’

  Ned gave a brief nod. ‘There’s sense in that,’ he began. Then he fell silent, looking at someone over Goodluck’s shoulder.

  Lucy had come up behind them. ‘Dance with me, Goodluck?’

  Goodluck turned, unable to resist the charm of her girlish voice. She put her hands in his and tugged. He allowed her to lead him back out into the grass circle, smiling despite himself. Innocence shone from her face – and God grant it should long remain so. At least until she was safely married off to some worthy man and no longer his responsibility. Goodluck could not help thinking what a remarkable wife Lucy would make. Yet the thought of seeing her married, the daily charge on his conscience lifted for ever, left his spirits oddly depressed.

  ‘No, no!’ Lucy laughed as Goodluck stumbled over a tree root, losing his step; she turned and gestured to Sos, still seated up in the tree with the lute in his arms, to start the tune again. ‘Do you not know this dance? It is all the fashion at court. We cross hands here – see? Then you must bow and I make my curtsey. Oh, pay no attention to Master Twist. He didn’t know the steps either.’

  She led Goodluck about the grass circle they had marked out earlier for their rehearsal, patiently teaching him the steps of the dance. It was warm now and Goodluck was soon sweating, uncomfortable in his player’s costume. Lucy kicked off her shoes and unlaced her white coif, letting her shining black hair hang down loose over the shoulders of her gown. He made his bow as shown, wishing he could be at court more often and watch her dance before the Queen, so boldly graceful, almost a woman with her figure rounding out at breast and hip in the tight-fitted gown. The steps became subtler and more complicated, ever harder to remember, and Goodluck shook his head, pulling away.

  ‘I’m done!’ he muttered,
his voice hoarse. ‘You’d be better off dancing with John.’

  Under the shelter of the oak tree, Goodluck threw off Canute’s cloak and took a swig of ale from the jug. Even Sos seemed to have had enough. He had stopped playing and was scrambling down from his perch in the branches with a broad grin on his face. The sound of applause drifted over the lush, waving acres of grass. Goodluck turned and saw, in the furthest reaches of the field, a troupe of acrobats in green livery rehearsing for a small crowd of onlookers, tumbling and jumping through hoops. He took another warm swig of ale and looked back at the girl he had long ceased to consider his ‘daughter’.

  Lucy, left without music or a partner, turned silently on her own in the grass circle, arms spread wide. She was at her most natural there, barefoot, her hair uncovered, raising her face blindly to the sun. John Twist spoke to her in passing and Lucy laughed, but did not open her eyes.

  Taking them all by surprise, Sos suddenly darted out and caught Lucy about the waist, whirling her round a couple of times, then tickled her sides before squirming back up his rope into the broad oak branches above.

  ‘You can’t catch me!’ he called down triumphantly.

  With mock outrage in her flushed face, Lucy stared up at the little Greek hidden among the green leaves. She was laughing again now, a mischievous look in her eyes. It seemed the terrors of her night adventure out in the Brays had been well and truly forgotten, a thought which pleased Goodluck and at the same time disturbed him. If Lucy was able to forget the threat of danger so easily, she would soon find herself back at the point of a knife.

  She jerked twice on the knotted end of the rope that dangled beside her. ‘Oh, can I not?’

  ‘You’re a woman. And everyone knows that women can’t climb.’

  She gurgled with laughter, and shot a naughty look at Goodluck. ‘Did you hear that? Alas, your friend does not remember the household in which I was so delicately raised. He has forgotten who tutored me and taught me his trade. Not the quiet art of embroidery, or cooking, or how to clean a house from top to bottom. But how to listen at doors, and how to puzzle out a coded message … and how to climb a rope!’

  With a defiant gesture, Lucy swung herself up on the rope, took two firm pulls to raise herself above the ground, then fixed her bare feet to the knotted end and used the rope to help her climb more swiftly. Her cumbersome skirts billowed out as she climbed, revealing a flash of strong black thighs to the men below.

  Sos gave a great shout of surprised laughter and scrambled back along the branch, away from his pursuer. More concerned than amused, Goodluck stood beneath the rope, tense and watchful, on guard to catch her if she fell. Reaching the branch above, Lucy hoisted herself on to it with all the clumsy grace of a sailor climbing back on board a ship, then began to crawl after Sos, laughing all the while.

  ‘Lucy, you hoyden, be careful!’ Goodluck called up after her, but she and Sos were already lost to his sight in the thick foliage.

  ‘You taught her how to read a coded message?’

  Goodluck lowered his gaze to Ned’s disapproving face. ‘Once, that’s all,’ he explained defensively. ‘It was raining and my sister had left her in my care for the afternoon.’

  Ned managed one of his rare smiles, though his voice was heavy with irony. ‘I’m surprised you never married, Goodluck. You would have done well with a parcel of strapping young sons to teach, all fine spies in the making.’

  ‘I have not taught Lucy how to be a spy,’ he said impatiently. ‘Drop it, would you?’

  ‘Very well.’ Ned shrugged, without any heat. He had never been one to pry into another man’s business, just as he preferred not to discuss his own. ‘So what’s our next move?’

  Goodluck stoppered the ale jug and tossed it to John Twist, who had come up behind them, listening to their conversation. ‘The plan is simple. We watch the Italian bear-tamer and keep an account of his movements. By day as well as night from now on. Rumour is that the Queen’s furious with Leicester for making too free with the Earl of Essex’s wife. They say she may leave Kenilworth at any moment and head north instead. So it’s fair to assume that any conspirators will be looking to make good on their plan in the next few days, rather than lose this opportunity.’

  Twist passed the ale jug to Ned. ‘We’ve been watching two men so far, the bear-tamer and this Massetti character. But you suspect there are more conspirators in this business, is that right?’

  ‘There are certainly others, yes. But since we don’t know how many are involved, or who those might be, we should concentrate our watch on the bear-tamer. If I am right, and our luck turns for the better, he will lead us to these other plotters.’ Goodluck looked at the men’s faces and, sensing their hesitation, knew some further explanation would be necessary before he had their full trust. ‘Massetti seems to be here in no other capacity than as a source of payment for the assassins, and he has kept to his room when not paying court to the Queen. No doubt he fears for his life.’

  Sos had swung down out of the branches and was helping Lucy down too. Landing light on her feet as always, the girl trod softly into their little circle, her dancer’s grace attracting all their gazes. No longer smiling, she accepted the jug of ale from Ned and drank a long draught.

  ‘This man with the bear,’ Lucy ventured, wiping her wet mouth with her hand. ‘You think he may be the Italian you’ve been chasing all summer?’

  Goodluck glanced carefully about, checking nobody was close enough to overhear their conversation. But although the path through the field was filling up with people again after the damp start to the day, nobody seemed interested enough in their motley gang to stop and listen. Even the troupe of acrobats in the far corner of the field seemed to have finished their rehearsal and were talking together earnestly, head to head.

  ‘There’s a chance this is the man himself, yes,’ he admitted reluctantly, not keen to draw Lucy any further into this business than she already was. ‘Though if he is indeed the Italian I’ve been seeking, he is bolder than I gave him credit for. He has paraded himself and his men before us ever since the night he arrived, almost daring us to make our move.’

  Ned, who had turned silent, leaning against the oak with his arms folded, stirred again at this. ‘But why would he take such a risk?’

  ‘Why indeed?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sos speculated slowly, ‘this man is a distraction, a game to make us look the wrong way. Perhaps we are supposed to notice the shiny coin in this hand, while the other hand wields a long knife.’

  Lucy stared at Sos with widened eyes and lips pressed tightly together.

  Wishing to reassure his young charge, Goodluck added lightly, ‘That’s a possibility. But let us not forget that all this is guesswork, nothing more. The man may be what he appears. An Italian bear-tamer with a bad temper.’

  ‘And a beard to rival your own,’ Twist murmured.

  Twenty-eight

  THE CURTAIN ABOVE her mattress rattled on its pole and Lucy sat up in shock, roused from a sleep so deep her dreams still possessed her. It was dark in the corridor, but the man who was leaning over her makeshift bed was carrying a lantern, as though he had come from outside. Lucy thought she recognized him; one of the Queen’s aides, a stocky man with greying hair. The flame flickered dimly inside the lantern, illuminating the man’s face.

  ‘You’re to get up at once. The Queen wants you.’

  Lucy stared, still groggy with sleep, not quite understanding the order. ‘The Queen? But … But it is not yet dawn.’

  ‘You have three minutes to make yourself ready and follow me,’ he told her sourly. He hoisted up his lantern to illuminate her cloak, hanging beside her cap on a hook above her bed. ‘Don’t bother to dress. You must come without delay.’

  The man stood discreetly aside while Lucy swung herself out of bed, sought for her shoes and pulled her cloak around her. There was not time to dress her hair properly; instead, she dampened it with a splash of water from her bedside bowl, dragged a
long-toothed comb through its unruly length, and tried to press it down under the collar of her cloak. The Queen’s aide coughed, clearly impatient.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Lucy announced, pulling the curtain shut behind her. She followed the eerie swinging glow of his lantern along the corridor and down one of the narrow stone stairways of the keep. There were window slits at every turn of the stairs. Lucy shivered in the draught, and dragged her cloak closer at the throat. Outside, a ragged light along the horizon signalled that day was breaking. No other souls appeared to be stirring in this part of the keep.

  The low wooden door at the base of the stairs led out into the keep’s arcade, a paved area decorated with white fluted columns and miniature citrus trees in large wooden planters. The man gestured her to keep up, quickening his pace through the arcade, the air fragrant at this early hour, everything still fresh from last night’s dewfall. His lantern was barely necessary now, a ghostly flicker as the sky began to flush with light above them. He led her down a short flight of steps and through a rose-covered archway on to a narrow walkway. Lucy recognized the neat herb beds and clipped hedges of the Privy Garden reserved for the Queen and her ladies, the great marble fountain at its centre spilling an endless cascade of water, the only sound to break the silence.

  The Queen was waiting at the end of the lime-tree walk, pacing back and forth as though unable to keep still. Her ladies, wrapped in cloaks, their heads close together, stood huddled by the gated entrance, within sight of their mistress but evidently forbidden to approach any closer. One or two of the women raised pale, resentful faces as Lucy entered the garden, surveying her undressed hair and shabby cloak with disdain.

  ‘Lucy Morgan!’ the Queen exclaimed, seeing her approach, her eyes keen and bright. ‘Well done, Fenlon. You will wait with my ladies and escort Mistress Morgan back once I am finished with her. No, take the lantern. We shall not need it, it is almost dawn.’

  Once the man had retired to the gate with the others, the Queen signalled Lucy to walk alongside her.