His face hardened, so that the bone structure under his taut skin seemed to show. “So, you were there. I’m impressed. You played me like a courtier. Just look”—he flung out his arm, sloshing wine from his goblet—“you’re now free to hire yourself out to whomever you please, while I’m locked up waiting for the same ax that killed my father.” His voice darkened. “And all because my family took pity on you, rather than throwing you down a well like you deserved.”
“Are you blaming me for this?” I arched my brow. “Because if so, you do yourself a disservice. I didn’t put you or your brothers in here. You did all that on your own.”
His goblet froze halfway to his mouth. I had struck at his core; he could not refute that, more than greed or ambition, the Dudley belief in their infallibility had been their ruin.
“You speak the truth,” he said at length, his voice dead quiet. “It’s not as if you did anything but seek your advantage. Elizabeth always did have a weakness for subservience; she likes nothing better than to be fawned upon.” He drank. “You said you came for something of hers. What is it?” He held up a hand. “No. Don’t tell me.” He smiled. “A letter.”
The contempt in his tone enraged me. I had to stop myself from being the one who lunged first. “Because of that letter, she’s in grave danger. Ambassador Renard seeks evidence against her. He suspects her and Courtenay of plotting against the queen. Your own head also stands to roll if you don’t help me. I know very well that you’re behind it.”
“Oh? I fail to see how I can be suspect. Am I not a prisoner already?”
“Condemned men have the least to lose. Courtenay also told me everything.” I watched his feigned indifference slip from his face like a poorly fitted mask. “I know about the other letters you’ve sent, to men throughout the kingdom. You made a mistake with Courtenay. He may cut a fine enough figure, but he’s hardly heroic. How long do you think he’ll hold out when Renard convinces the queen to order his arrest, as he will? I rather think the earl will take one look at the rack and spill his guts. And once he tells Renard what he wants to hear, they’ll come here—for you.”
The visible protruding of Robert’s jaw muscles assured me I’d finally hit my target.
“But they’ll need proof,” I added. “The queen isn’t given to signing death warrants without it. Give it to me and they’ll never find it.”
“You expect me to take your word for it,” he snarled, “after what you’ve done? You betrayed my family!”
“If you don’t, Renard will hire someone else. And if his next agent gets as far as I have, you won’t survive.” I returned his implacable stare. “Give me all your letters and they’ll find nothing. No evidence. What can they accuse you of? Only the earl risks arrest.”
He considered for a long moment. Then he raised his hands and began to clap slowly, in mocking applause. “Congratulations! You’ve become a man. But you’ve neglected to consider one thing.” He showed me his teeth. “What if your precious Elizabeth isn’t quite as innocent as you think? What if you seek to spare her from the very thing she herself helped set in motion?”
My hands coiled at my sides. “Speak plainly for once.”
He chuckled. “I will. It would be my pleasure. Ambassador Renard is right about this much: There is a plot against the queen. It’s the only way to save us from this infernal Spanish prince and Mary’s deluded belief in her duty to return us all to popery and superstition. At the appointed date and time, men I have sent letters to will muster their armies; they will rise up to declare Queen Mary unfit to rule. She’ll be given a choice: If she renounces her throne willingly, her life will be spared. Elizabeth insisted on it; she thinks that faced with an uprising, her sister will heed reason.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “But we both know that Mary can’t heed reason, don’t we? We know she’ll fight to the death, as she did against my father. And thus, death she will have, by my word. Her head will join my father’s on the bridge, and then, my faithless friend, I will have my revenge.”
I didn’t speak. I stood silent and let his words absorb into me, like painful ink. It was difficult to hear but not a shock: Elizabeth had never been one to back down from a fight, and Mary had threatened her. The queen had even, according to Renard, questioned her legitimacy. She may have misled me as to her full involvement, but she didn’t realize how far Dudley had preyed on her fears for his own twisted ends, not when she found herself in the midst of her own battle for her right to succeed. It was why she’d written to Dudley; why she risked her safety and Mary’s eroding trust; why she indulged Courtenay even after she’d been warned. She thought she could still compel her sister to accept the sacrifice that being queen entailed, to turn away from her Hapsburg marriage for the good of her people.
She didn’t know Mary at all, and regardless of her reasons, she had committed treason. It could cost her, and me, our lives. Not that I was going to let it stop me. I had my own fight to wage: my avenging of Peregrine, who had perished by Renard’s hand.
I had to destroy the ambassador, come what may.
“Your life or death makes no difference to me,” I said to Robert. I took a step toward him, my hand extended. “I want those letters, and you’re going to give them to me.”
He laughed. “I think not. Elizabeth didn’t tell you the truth because, much as she may delight in sending you where you don’t belong, in the end she understands that when a man has no lineage it’s a stain that marks him for life. She knows you’re just a nameless bastard who can’t be trusted.” He crossed his arms at his chest. “Now get back to whatever hole you crawled out of, Prescott, before I change my mind and make sure you regret coming here.”
I didn’t anticipate my reaction to these words. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t said worse, but as if all the memories of my tormented childhood surged up inside me, a violent wave that reduced my entire existence to this one moment, I lowered my head and rushed at him with all my strength, throwing him against the sideboard.
I heard a metallic crash as the decanter went flying. Then he let out a savage yell and started pounding me. I held fast to his waist, dragging him down onto the floor and swiping the poniard from my boot. As he tried to wrap his hands about my neck, I straddled him in one swift move and angled the blade at his throat.
“Last time,” I said. “Give me the letters. Or would you rather bleed?”
“Bleed!” he hissed, and he twisted with brutal strength, bringing up his knees and ramming them into my groin. Stars exploded in my head. I lost my grip. I hit him as hard as I could in his face; he hit back, and then we were struggling, tumbling across the rug, fists ramming and fingers gouging as he sought to wrest the knife away or drive it into me. I felt nothing—no pain, no fear, not even when he slammed a fist into my temple and the world went dark. With a ferocious bellow I didn’t recognize as my own, I started beating him, over and over, using my poniard hilt, hearing flesh give and bone crack.
Then my hands were about his throat; he flailed under me as I shut off his wind like a vise. He started to choke. My rage—that boundless, consuming rage, which I had kept tethered deep inside like some beast, fed on years of suffering, of doubt and yearning and helplessness—devoured all caution, all pity.
All reason.
“Stop! Please!”
A girl’s frantic wail and the frenzied barking of a terrier barely penetrated my consciousness. A pounding sound echoed; Robert was kicking, his heels banging spasmodically against the floorboards as he fought for air. As I looked over my shoulder, past the blood seeping down my face, I saw figures rush into the room, coming toward me.
I thrust my blade at Robert’s throat. “Any closer and I swear to God, I’ll kill him.”
His brothers slid to a halt. John was in the lead, ashen dismay spreading across his face as he took in our sprawled position, the contents from the sideboard spilled across the floor, the overturned chairs and stools strewn in our wake.
Guilford was the first to recognize me.
He cried, “It’s the foundling!” and Henry Dudley spat, “Whoreson. Let the dog loose on him. Then I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”
“You will do no such thing!” rang out a wavering voice; it came from the same girl who’d cried out at us to stop. As I tightened my hold on Robert, I stared through the ebbing haze of my anger to where Jane Grey stood as if petrified on the threshold.
She was looking at me in disbelief. “What … what are you doing here?”
“He’s plotting treason,” I told her. “You’re in here because his father forced you to assume the queen’s throne, and now he would send you all to the scaffold.”
She lifted a hand to her chest, as though she lacked for breath. She said haltingly to John, “I believe he speaks the truth. I know him.”
“So do we!” retorted Guilford. “We reared the worthless shit in our house and then he turned coat and betrayed us—”
I pushed the tip of my blade harder against Robert’s neck. He let out a strangled cry. “He has letters to prove it,” I said. “I want them. Now. Or he dies.”
John Dudley shifted his gaze to Robert. I could see he was unwell, his face sunken and complexion sallow, like an invalid’s. His voice was slow, measured, as if it cost him to formulate words. “Letters? Is this true, Robert?”
Robert tried to raise protest; I cut him off. “It’s true, though he’ll lie to his last breath if he can. Where are they? Where are the letters?”
John looked bewildered. “I don’t—” Jane had already moved past him, evading her husband, Guilford, who stood clenching and unclenching his fists. Henry ripped the dog’s lead from him and unleashed the terrier; it bounded at me, baring its teeth.
“Sirius, sit!” Jane snapped. The dog went to its haunches at once, a low growl in its throat as she proceeded to the hearth, groping under the lip of the chimney. She extracted a cylindrical oil-skin tube, which she held pensively before she turned around.
Guilford gasped. “How did you know?”
She gave him a bitter smile. “Do you still think me a complete fool? I’ve been coming here every week to walk and dine with you; I have eyes. I saw books arrive. I saw others leave. I counted them every day. I even tried to read one. But they are useless. The pages have been cut out.” She kicked with her diminutive foot at the pile of books near the dog’s cushion by the hearth, toppling them. “Your brother Robert would see us dead to satisfy his ambition. Even now, he refuses to recognize that our fate has always lain in God’s hands.”
“A pox on God!” snarled Henry Dudley. “And a pox on you, too, you righteous Grey bitch!” He started to lunge at Jane. John stepped in front of her with his hand held up.
“No.” Though he was frail, in his voice reverberated an echo of that unquestionable authority his father had once commanded. “That is enough.” He looked at me. “Let Robert go. You have my word you will not be harmed.”
I hesitated. A room full of Dudleys and one exit: It was my worst nightmare come to life, but it was a risk I had to take. I released Robert, rising quickly to my feet and stepping away. He drew in gulps of air, his face a mass of contusions, his lip split and bleeding. I still couldn’t feel anything, but I knew I would later. I must look almost as bad as he did.
“You can’t let him leave,” Henry was saying. “He knows everything now. He’ll tell the queen. The bastard foundling will be the one who sends us all to the scaffold!”
John glared at him before he turned to me. “You once served our family. But you deceived us and, according to Robert, helped the queen put us in here. Will you now send us all to our deaths?”
I shook my head, trying not to look at Jane’s thin figure behind him, the tube in her hands. “I want only to help my mistress, Princess Elizabeth.”
Robert croaked from behind me, “Don’t believe him. He’s a liar. He wants revenge. Give him those letters and he will use them against us. He’ll take us down, every last one.”
John hesitated. All of a sudden, fear seized me. I might not make it out of here alive.
“I promise on my own life,” I said to John. “I will not use the letters against you.” I clutched my knife tighter, sensing his brothers watching, waiting for his word to tear into me like hungry wolves.
Then John stepped aside. “Give him the letters.”
Jane held out the tube. As I took it, I saw the stoic resignation in her blue-gray eyes. I had to resist the urge to clasp her to me, to gather her up and take her far from this awful place. She was so short she barely reached my chin, fragile as a child; the toll of her confinement showed in the hollows of her cheeks and in her shadowed, haunted gaze.
“I believe you to be a man of honor,” she said. “I trust you’ll honor your word.”
“My lady,” I whispered. “I would rather die than see you harmed.” I bent over her hand. Then I tucked the tube into the saddlebag, grabbed it and my cloak off the table, and started for the door.
“Prescott!”
I paused, glancing over my shoulder. Robert had staggered to his feet with John’s help. Leaning on his older brother’s thin shoulder, he flung his words at me like a gauntlet.
“It’s not over,” he said. “Nothing you say or do can stop it. You may have won this day, but in the end I’ll triumph. I will restore my name if it’s the last thing I do. And remember this: On the day Elizabeth takes her throne, I will be at her side. I will be the one she turns to, in all things. And then, Prescott—then you’ll regret this day. Her hour of glory will be your doom.”
I didn’t answer. I did not give him the satisfaction. I turned and walked out and left him there in his prison, where, if there was any justice left in the world, he would remain for the rest of his days.
It was the only way Elizabeth would ever be safe from him.
Chapter Fifteen
Outside, a cacophony of distant bells rang. It was late afternoon, and the winter sky had begun to darken. Pulling my cloak about me I hastened back through the ward, pausing briefly at a horse trough to wet my cloak and wash the blood from my face. The gates would close at dusk; I must be out before they did. Transferring the tube from my cloak to the safety of my doublet, I tried to look impervious as I made my way to the gatehouse.
The yeomen gave me a curious look. I yanked up my cloak’s cowl, hurrying out. Only as I gained distance from the Tower did the knot in my chest start to dissolve.
I had done it. I had Dudley’s letters. Renard couldn’t use these against Elizabeth: The proof he required was now in my hands. All I had to do was to report whatever lies I must to keep him at bay, long enough to send word to her and—
I paused. And do what? Confront her? Demand to know why she’d acted so recklessly, why she had lied to me when she knew what Robert planned? Or should I simply destroy the letters and never mention that I had discovered she’d taken a stance against her sister, pretend she was as guiltless as she had feigned? As I considered this, though, I abruptly recalled with a jolt what she’d said to me in the stables. I warn you now: You, too, could be in grave danger if you persist in this pursuit. I’ll not have you risk yourself for my sake, not this time. Regardless of your loyalty, this is not your fight.
I came to a stop in the middle of the road. She had warned me. In my zeal to protect her, I’d failed to hear her actual message. It was not my fight, she had said, and she meant it.
She had walked into Dudley’s web willingly.
Around me, the light faded, lengthening the shadows. Veering into Tower Street, I began searching the painted signs hanging above doorways for the Griffin. People hustled about their errands, bundled to their ears and eager to finish with their day so they could get indoors before the night took hold. Everyone steered clear of me. I would have steered clear, too. My left cheek felt grossly swollen and was starting to throb. I had a wound on my temple and, no doubt, several nasty bruises on my face. Nevertheless, a burden of years had been lifted from my shoulders. I had stood up to Robert Dudley. No longer did I have to cowe
r from my past, for this time I’d given as good as I got. Some might say I’d given better.
I espied the sign ahead, depicting a black-winged griffin. I pushed past the doorway inside, stamping my boots to get the blood back into my ice-numb feet. The tavern was choked with the smell of greasy food, cheap ale, and hearth and tallow smoke, and raucous with voices; it was also blessedly warm. I’d never been so happy to find myself among ordinary men doing ordinary things in my entire life. No one gave me a second glance as I weaved past the serving hutch and the crowded booths and tables. Apparently a bruised eye or two was common enough in taverns like these, close to the rough-and-tumble dockyards and riverside gaming houses.
Scarcliff lounged in apparent content by the smoking hearth, his legs stretched out before him, a tankard on the low table and a battered white mastiff at his feet. His chin drooped against his chest; he looked deep in slumber. I noticed his right boot had a wedged sole, as if he compensated for a disparity in the length of his legs, perhaps an old injury that had made one shorter than the other. I inched closer, transfixed by the sight of him in repose, but before I got within ten paces his head suddenly shot up, swerving to me with that uncanny precision he’d shown in the brothel, as if he could smell my approach.
He peered at me. “Christ on the cross,” he muttered. “Looks like you had a time of it.”
I broke into an unexpected grin, inexplicably relieved to see him. He might be a villain, as apt to drive a blade into my ribs and tumble me into a ditch as to escort me back to Whitehall, but at least he was a villain I could understand—a man for hire, who worked for his coin, not some treacherous noble whose corruption had permeated his very soul.
“Lord Robert and I had a disagreement,” I said. “Guess who won?”
He snorted and hailed a passing tavern maid. “Nan, bring more ale!” Taking the flagon from her, he filled a tankard to its rim and shoved it, sloshing, at me. “Drink. You need it.”
The ale was vile, a yeasty concoction that slid like wet flour down my throat, but the heat it generated helped clear my head. Scarcliff set his hand on the mastiff as it looked up at me with mild interest. He seemed quite familiar with the animal, which boasted nearly as many scars as he did—a fighting dog, no doubt, lucky enough to have survived the pit.
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