by Lily Blake
Mary was at a loss. Sitting on the cold stone floor, she listened to the little girl’s crying and tried desperately to think of a way to calm her.
Bash folded himself into a sitting position beside her. “Did you discover anything from Catherine’s maid?”
“She wouldn’t confirm anything,” Mary said. “But I’m certain they were both involved. As soon as I questioned her, the girl practically became hysterical. She’s terrified of Catherine; she has some sort of hold over her family. Nothing I offered could shake her.”
“So we have no proof of Catherine’s involvement and, now, no Alys.” He sighed. “Disappearing hardly makes her look innocent in the eyes of the undecided.”
“But how could she have escaped?” Mary wondered aloud. “How could anyone get out of the south tower without being seen?”
“It’s practically impossible.” Bash gave a halfhearted laugh. “You know, I’d almost hoped we would spirit her away through your secret tunnels.”
A frustrating realization dawned on Mary’s face. “I didn’t,” she said. “But someone else could have. There’s only one other person who knows the tunnels almost as well as I do.”
“Let me guess,” Bash said. “Her name starts with a C?”
Mary let out a heavy sigh. “She’s always one step ahead of us,” she said. “I should have paid closer attention to what was going on, instead of becoming too involved with the girls.”
“You couldn’t have known Catherine had an interest in this girl,” Bash said, grabbing her hand and holding it tightly. “We still don’t know why.”
“But we do know we have to find her,” Mary said, releasing Bash’s hand and pulling back, ever so slightly. She knew there was no impropriety between them, but it wouldn’t do for Kenna or Francis to walk in and see them holding hands on her bedroom floor. “If she can still be found. Who knows what Catherine has done with her by now.”
“Or how far away she could be,” Bash agreed. “I’ll go back to Francis, discover what I can. If there is any news, it will go to him first.”
“Thank you for bringing Ada to me,” Mary said as Bash stood to leave. “I’ll take care of her.”
Bash nodded. “I couldn’t leave her with those guards. They would have tossed her into the dungeons when they were done with her.”
“She’s safe now,” Mary said. “She won’t leave my sight again.”
Bash gave Mary a sad smile and closed the door quietly behind him as he left.
Settling back on her heels, Mary combed her long hair over one shoulder and dipped her head down under the bed. “Hello,” she said.
Ada, curled up into a little ball, opened one eye and peeked at the queen.
“I know you’ve had a very difficult few days,” Mary said, sliding onto her belly so that she could better see the girl. “And I’m very sorry but I don’t think anyone is going to find you underneath my bed, so perhaps you’d better stay there.”
“My mummy always makes me come out from under the bed,” Ada said, eyeing Mary with suspicion. “She says I shouldn’t hide.”
“Well,” Mary replied, noticing how clean the floors were. It really wasn’t something she thought about too often, just another part of court life she took for granted. “I think, in this instance, hiding under the bed sounds just fine. In fact, I’d very much like to come and join you if that would be all right.”
Ada stifled a giggle. “But you’re the queen!”
Mary smiled, laughing along with her. “But it’s no fun for me to sit out here if you’re hiding under there, is it?”
Considering Mary’s suggestion for a moment, Ada uncurled her legs, stretching out underneath the huge wooden bed. “All right, then,” she said. “You can hide under here with me.”
Just as Mary shuffled completely underneath, the door opened again and she saw two pairs of leather boots stride into the room, followed by two uniformed guards, their capes fluttering around their ankles. Ada’s eyes opened wide in fear. Sliding her arm around the girl’s shoulder, Mary pressed a finger to her lips and made a shushing sound. “We’re hiding,” she whispered. “Remember?”
Silently, Ada nodded and pressed herself closer to the queen.
“Mary?” Francis’s voice rang out as he paced the room, pausing outside her bathroom. “Are you in there?”
“I’m sure she was in here a moment ago, Your Grace,” one of Mary’s maids spoke up from outside the room. “Perhaps she went to find you.”
Francis paused by the secret entrance to the tunnels. He knew about Mary’s routes around the castle but he wasn’t nearly as familiar with them as she was. If he went inside to look for her, he might not find his way back again.
“I’m positive Mary is fine. I imagine she is with Kenna, Greer, or Lola.” The second voice and pair of boots belonged to Bash. “Come, Francis, the guards will be back from searching the stables. We should hear what they have to say.”
Francis hesitated for another moment. “Has anyone gone to check on Lola?” he asked.
Mary held her breath. Of course Francis was worried about Lola. It was only natural. She was the mother of his child. There was no reason to be jealous; he was protecting his son. His only son.
“Send someone to the cottage,” he barked at the guards. “I want to know that Lola and the baby are safe. Double her guard.”
Francis led the men out of the room, Bash pausing just a second longer than the others. “Good trick, my ladies,” he said quietly before he left. “Well hidden.”
Mary and Ada smiled at each other as the door was closed and the footsteps of the men faded into the distance.
“They didn’t know we were here!” Ada said, delighted with their success.
“We hid so well, even the king couldn’t find us,” Mary said as the two of them stretched out underneath the bed. “You must be the best hider in all of France.”
“I’m much better than Alys,” the little girl bragged. “Whenever we play hide-and-seek, I always find her and she can never find me. Once, I hid in a barrel in our garden and I was there forever.”
“That’s very impressive,” Mary said. “Do you think she’s hiding now?”
Ada shook her head, the smile slipping away from her face. “No,” she said. “You would have found her. She’s rubbish at it.”
Mary combed damp blond curls away from the little girl’s forehead and kissed it gently. “Where do you think she is?”
“Gone away,” Ada said. “When I had my dreams last night, she wasn’t in them anymore, just like my mummy and daddy.”
Resting her head on her arms, Mary looked up at the base of her bed. All the hours she’d spent in there and she’d never even thought to look underneath before. Ada reached out to grab a chunk of Mary’s hair and began to braid it carefully.
“How old are you, Ada?” Mary asked, trying to hold still so as not to interrupt the hairdressing that was taking place.
“Six,” she replied. “Seven in the winter.”
Six. The same age as Mary when she was sent to the convent. “Do you understand why everyone is afraid of Alys?”
Ada nodded, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on Mary’s hair. “They think she’s a witch,” she said. “But she isn’t.”
“Do you know what a witch is?”
Ada shuffled her shoulders in a tiny shrug. “Not really,” she said. “But it’s a bad thing, isn’t it?”
“Usually, yes,” Mary said. “A witch is someone who can do things that normal people can’t do.”
Ada stopped braiding Mary’s hair for a moment. “I can touch my nose with my tongue,” she said. “Alys can’t do that. Am I a witch?”
“I don’t think so.” Mary laughed. “It’s usually strange things—the kind of things that scare other people or make them uncomfortable. Things other people don’t understand.”
The little girl tried to carry on with her work but Mary’s thick hair kept slipping out of her shaky hands.
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“What’s wrong?” Mary asked as Ada began to sob quietly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“If I tell you a secret, can you keep it forever and ever?” Ada sniffed. “And never tell anyone, not even the king?”
“I promise.” Mary’s face was so solemn, Ada had to believe her. “It will go to my grave.”
Ada wiped away the tears with the backs of her hands and took a deep breath.
“I think I might be a witch,” she said, her bottom lip trembling.
Rolling over onto her stomach, Mary was suddenly alert. The braid in her hair came loose as she turned over. “Why would you think that?”
“I have dreams,” Ada whispered. “Sometimes I dream about things that haven’t happened yet.”
“And then those things do happen?” the young queen asked.
Another shrug. “Sometimes,” she said. “I only have them about people I love or people I know very well. I had a dream that our parents would leave us and now I don’t dream about them anymore.”
Mary looked at the tiny little girl lying beside her and took her hand. “Does anyone else know about these dreams?”
“My mother knew,” she said. “But she told me never to tell anyone. Once, when I was five, a tall man with a beard came to visit our village and he said he knew about my dreams, and he had them, too. He said they weren’t bad but people wouldn’t understand, that they weren’t normal. Does that mean I’m a witch?”
A tall man with a beard who had dreams of things that had not yet happened. There was only one person Mary knew who fit that description—Nostradamus. But he was a long way from court, God only knew where. He could be no help to them now.
“Tell me everything you remember about the tall man,” Mary said, trying not to scare the girl but desperate to know why he was in Auxerre. “Where did you meet him? Was he alone?”
“He was with a lady,” Ada said. “She was very grand, even though she was pretending not to be. I went with Alys to visit Guillaume that day. Sometimes he showed me how to make my flowers grow more quickly. He could even make them grow up to be a certain color—he showed me how to make the pink ones.”
“And the lady and the bearded man came to Guillaume’s house?” Mary asked.
Ada nodded. “He sent me and Alys outside while he and the lady talked. She was very mean; she kept saying it was his duty to help her, that he owed it to France and if he questioned her, it was reason.”
“Might she have said ‘treason’?” Mary suggested.
Threatening an innocent man with treason to get what she wanted? It had to be Catherine.
“Yes, she might,” Ada said. “Guillaume looked very scared of her. The tall man came outside with us when they started going through his herbs.
“He was very nice, not at all like the lady,” she went on, pursing her lips together while she tried to remember. “He asked Alys to fetch him an herb but I can’t remember which one. I can never remember their names and Alys gets so mad at me.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Mary said. “Can you remember what the tall man said?”
“It was a long time ago.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “And I was only five then.”
“Try?” Mary begged. “For me?”
“Hmm.” Ada squeezed her eyes shut and made little fists with her hands. “He said that he had a dream about me and that’s how he knew my name,” she said. “Then he said when he was a little boy, he had told people about the dreams he had and that it scared them so I shouldn’t tell anyone about my dreams unless I was really, really sure I could trust them, not even my parents. But I did trust them.”
“Of course you did,” Mary said, stroking her hair. “I met your parents, they were very kind.”
“They were,” Ada said with pride. “They were very good.”
“And then what did the tall man say?” Mary asked.
“That one day, he would come back and he would teach me, like Guillaume was teaching Alys,” she said, nodding with certainty at every word. “Because my dreams were very special and that’s why they had to stay a secret.”
Mary felt herself softening again. Certainly there had been times when she and Nostradamus had been on opposing sides, but after all he had done for her, she would always consider him a friend to France and to herself. “He sounds like a very nice man indeed,” she said. “I hope that one day he does come back.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Replacing her necklace, Catherine lifted her chin and checked herself over once more in her looking glass.
“Of course, it wasn’t a new wrinkle,” she said, sliding her dresser drawer shut and hiding away the silk scarves that had bound her captive. “Silly me.”
Underneath the bed, Alys stirred. The queen mother smiled.
“About time,” Catherine tutted. “I thought I was going to be stuck in here forever.”
Carefully, quietly, she stepped across the room on her toes, barely making a sound on the tiled floor. With her hand on the door, she cleared her throat and prepared herself.
“Guards!”
Throwing herself out into the corridor, Catherine cast around a look of utter horror. “Guards!” she screamed. “She’s here! She’s in my chambers!”
The two guards positioned outside her door were immediately joined by others, all rushing into her room while her lady’s maids hurried to surround her.
“She’s under the bed.” Catherine gulped, summoning tears as she spoke. “I was reading and thought perhaps I would try to take a nap and that’s when I saw her. Please, get Francis! I must see my son.”
Faint with feigned anguish, she reared backward as the guards dragged Alys out into the hallway. The tiny girl, half-awake and entirely confused, was dwarfed by the guards.
“Where am I?” she asked, wincing as they pinched at her wrists and held her fast. With a dazed expression, she looked Catherine up and down. “Who are you?”
Concealing her relief, the former queen kept up her facade. Catherine gathered herself, gently pushing her maids away to reassure them that all was well.
“I am Catherine de Medici,” she said, tossing her head and staring the poor girl down. “And your plot has failed, witch.”
Alys looked around her, her huge blue eyes filling with tears. “How did I get here?” She pulled against the guards, only causing them to tighten their grip. “Where is Mary?”
“So you admit it, then?” Catherine said, gesturing to the gathering crowd. “The queen was your intended target?”
“Mother!” Francis tore down the corridor, his hair wild and his face red, Bash close behind him. “You’re safe.”
“Yes, my dear,” she replied, pressing her hands against her heart. “She was underneath my bed but it seems as though her final target was Mary.”
“Mary?” Francis turned to Alys, his fingers curling into fists. “You would attack your queen?” he asked. “After everything she did to protect you?”
“I didn’t,” Alys said, struggling against the guards. “I wouldn’t, I swear it.”
Bash stared at Catherine, the mingled fear and relief on her face underwritten by something he couldn’t quite define.
“Francis, what is happening?” Mary arrived, closely followed by several guards. “You found Alys?”
“Lying in wait,” Catherine replied. “Underneath my bed. God knows how she got into my chambers.”
Mary looked at Bash, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. They hadn’t enough evidence to accuse Catherine of anything, especially not now that Francis was convinced Alys had been caught red-handed, about to attack his mother.
“Francis.” Mary placed herself between Catherine and the king. “There has to be an explanation.”
“Search the girl,” Francis commanded, ignoring her.
“Francis, please,” Mary pleaded. “Let me talk to her.”
“You’ve done nothing but talk to her,” Francis said, refusing to make eye contact with his wife. “And
two people have died. I have no choice now, Mary.”
“Please, Your Grace,” Alys, her eyes as big as saucers and filled with fear, whispered to Mary. “Please help me.”
Mary looked at her, desperate and afraid and completely at a loss.
“Your Grace, these were in her pocket.” The guard opened his hand to reveal the sprigs of thyme Mary had watched her pick in the herb garden the day before. “That’s all.”
“Herbs?” Catherine exclaimed with genuine delight. “I wonder what she could possibly have needed those for.”
Mary turned on her mother-in-law, fire in her eyes and her heart. “It’s thyme,” Mary said. “She picked it in our garden to make a tea for her sister, who had a stomachache. Surely you know that, Catherine? With your vast knowledge of herbal remedies.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied coolly, stepping past the young queen and focusing her attention on Francis. “We can’t afford to take any more chances. While she lives, we are all in danger, you and Mary included. We must act now.”
“Take her to the dungeons,” Francis commanded. As the guards began to drag Alys away, her screams filled the corridors, echoing throughout the castle. Mary opened her mouth to speak but Francis held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “This has gone on long enough. I need you to support me now, Mary, just as you promised you would.”
Following the guards, he left Mary, Bash, and Catherine alone with her maids. With a polite smile at her companions, Catherine turned to her maids, the look of fear pasted back on her face.
“Please go and search my chambers,” she beseeched the terrified-looking girls. Mary noticed Veronique, the tallest and darkest among them, staring pointedly at the floor. “Make note of anything unusual but do not touch it. Do not touch anything that she might have cursed. We will have the guards remove anything that looks suspicious.”
The girls nodded and reluctantly followed their orders, whispering among themselves and clutching one another’s arms as they entered Catherine’s chambers, as convinced of Alys’s guilt as all of Auxerre.
“Thank goodness that is all over.” Catherine smiled at Mary and Bash. “Look at you two,” she said, glancing over her shoulder as she walked away. “Thick as thieves. Just like old times, isn’t it?”
