Maid of Secrets

by Jennifer McGowan

  At long last, de Feria and Count de Martine took their leave of each other, and I felt my shoulders relax. I held my position another ten minutes until I felt Jane move up beside me. Of all the maids, her walk was the most distinctive, no matter her gown. Her gait was long-limbed and fast, but with a strange efficiency that seemed the exact opposite of Beatrice’s elegant extension. Jane always seemed to be prepared to leap from a crouch, even when she was standing still.

  She stood surveying the dancing couples alongside me for a moment before she spoke. “You cannot find this as fascinating as you appear to,” she said.

  “I don’t.” I shook my head. “Has de Feria left the room?”

  “Not yet. He’s now talking with Cecil and Walsingham.”

  “Walsingham?” I half-turned, but Jane’s warning hand made me swivel my gaze back to the dance floor. “And Count de Martine?” I asked.

  “Charming his way through a gaggle of lords and ladies as we speak. Beatrice is about to eat her own ruff, even with Cavanaugh panting after her. It almost makes the evening worthwhile.” I felt Jane’s glance upon me. “Did they say anything of import?”

  “I couldn’t say.” I gave her a weak smile. “How well do you know Spanish?”

  “Not as well as Anna,” Jane admitted. “Should you speak to her before you meet with Cecil to gain an understanding of what you heard? Can you remember all of it?”

  “I can remember it, yes,” I said. “Still, Beatrice is right. It’s foolish for me to eavesdrop on a conversation I cannot understand.”

  “Foolish like a fox, perhaps,” Jane murmured, narrowing her eyes at Cecil. “And the fox shouldn’t be the only one to know what the Spaniards are planning. We should know, too.”

  I hesitated, welcoming her camaraderie but still unsure of my place even after three months in the Queen’s service. I could not afford a misstep in my role as spy, not with my troupe hanging in the balance. “But . . . that wasn’t part of our orders, Jane. Cecil said nothing about me sharing what I learned.”

  “Of course he didn’t. But he didn’t say you couldn’t, either. And some secrets are not worth keeping.” She looked at me hard. “Marie told us nothing, Rat, and look what that got her, on a night just like this one.”

  A chill shivered down my back. I swallowed. Nodded. And Jane nodded back. “Wait here,” she said.

  Within moments she’d returned, dragging a protesting Anna behind her. Jane set the three of us up in a row, her body blocking Anna and me from view. “Now,” Jane commanded to me once Anna was in place. “Speak.”

  I leaned forward and began whispering into Anna’s ear.

  “You go too fast, you go too fast!” Anna gasped, but then she stilled until I was done. I rocked on my heels and drew in a heavy breath, the words circling back on themselves in my mind, the lines of a play ready to be run again.

  Anna looked sick, and Jane prompted her. “Well?” she demanded.

  “He . . . the Count de Feria . . . he said terrible things about the Queen,” Anna breathed, her voice hollow. She blushed. “He called her—a whore.”

  My eyes went wide, but Jane merely grunted with amusement. “He’s a Spaniard. What do you expect him to say? Was there anything of import?”

  Anna frowned. “The young Count de Martine is to give de Feria letters—from the pope, he said. He has these letters with him now, but de Feria said no, he would not take them. And de Martine had to convince him to do this ‘one last time,’ and to pass them along as he normally did.”

  “Pass them along?” I frowned. Letters from a zealously Catholic pope being sent into the court of a fiercely Protestant queen could only spell danger. “To whom?”

  “That part apparently did not need explanation,” Anna said. “The ambassador finally agreed, but he still would not take the letters here. He said for Rafe to meet him at the Norman Gate.”

  “The Norman Gate and not Winchester Tower?” Jane mused. “Then de Martine doesn’t plan to flee after he hands off his information. A hundred steps down from Winchester Tower, and you’re practically at the Thames. Beatrice will be so relieved.”

  “Flee?” I asked as I searched the crowd. “How could he leave the castle? Wouldn’t he be questioned?”

  Jane shook her head. “Not tonight. No one expects anyone to leave a ball so grand, I can assure you.”

  Anna agreed with a sharp nod. “De Feria said the same thing, that the guard would be lax on the night of a grand revel.” She beamed, happy to be in on a secret. “De Feria knows the castle well, it seems.”

  “The walls of this old wreck are filled with holes,” Jane said with disgust. “And the guards don’t do a good job filling them.”

  “There’s Cecil!” I warned, as he turned and caught my eye.

  Instantly Jane hissed “Get down!” to Anna, who obligingly dropped to a huddled ball, remarkably flexible in her heavy gown.

  Jane turned and gave me a blithe smile. “Did he see Anna?” she asked through her teeth, as if we weren’t hiding a full-skirted maid behind our own stiff gowns. I stared at Cecil another moment while he stared back at me, and I shook my head uncertainly.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. Cecil scowled with even more disapproval. “But it seems he wants something from me, so I, uh—I’d better go to him.”

  “Yes, you’d better,” Jane said. “But you won’t say anything about Anna knowing the Spaniard’s conversation, no?”

  “Oh, no. You mustn’t!” Anna squeaked from behind us.

  “Of course I won’t,” I said, even as Jane ordered Anna to be still.

  Then Jane met my gaze, her eyes lit with a grimly satisfied light. “It looks like we have our first secret to keep—but not our last,” she said. She smiled tightly. “The Queen’s new ears are a lot better, it seems, than those we had before.”

  She gave me a gentle push toward Cecil. “Be careful, Rat.”

  I left the brightly lit hall and slipped into the torch-lined corridor that led away from the Presence Chamber. In the sudden silence my ears pounded with sounds from the ball, the laughter, the music, and the swirling conversations. I pressed my hands against the sides of my torturously-tight corset. It was not difficult to act the part of a maid needing to catch her breath; I could have easily crumpled into a big ruffed heap, right there against the wall.

  Over and over the words that de Feria and Count de Martine had spoken replayed in my mind, along with Anna’s rapid translation. Then came Jane’s chilling words about the maid Marie, found with her ears sliced away, on just such a night as this. Her ears had not saved her. Would mine save me?

  I came around the corner so quickly that I nearly knocked Cecil down. He lifted his hands hastily to stop me.

  “Are you ill?” Cecil asked sharply, and I pulled back, unnerved by the irritation in his tone. He was always so cross. Among the Golden Rose players, no one ever berated me. You either succeeded or you starved. There was no emotion attached to it. “Breathe, Miss Fellowes!”

  I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until it all came out in a rush. Cecil rolled his eyes, and I found myself wringing my hands against my skirts with embarrassment, like a child reprimanded for sneaking an extra meat pie. The blasted old goat had that effect on me.

  He knew it, too. “What did you hear?” Cecil asked, his censure plain. “You seemed most inattentive every time I caught sight of you. Did they speak?”

  I nodded, not willing to admit how I had felt at dinner, dizzy with disorientation at the laughing, gorging people all around me. “I have to tell you exactly, Sir William. In Spanish.”

  Cecil shifted with impatience, then understanding lit his eyes. He nodded. “Follow me.”

  He led me to his official chambers off the Queen’s Privy Chamber and lit the candles on the writing desk. He sat down at the desk, lifted a quill, and dipped it in ink. “Begin,” he said.

  And once again I let the words take over me, rolling through the quiet chamber like music on the wind. I felt t
he cadences and styles of both men—the harsh and angry de Feria, the wry and amused Count de Martine. It took nearly as long to recite as it had to hear the Spaniards’ conversation, but Cecil stopped me only twice, to ensure the inflection I used meant whatever he thought it did.

  When I finished, Cecil’s manner appeared quite changed, excited even. He put his quill down and stretched his fingers in the candlelight.

  “Now that, Meg, is a faithful retelling. Please be aware that I know the difference.”

  I colored, not sure exactly what he meant, but accepting his comment as equal parts approval and criticism. “Yes, Sir William.”

  Cecil harrumphed and sat back in his chair. “This is very good,” he said, and he slanted me an approving glance.

  “May I ask what they said?” I asked quietly, praying I did not sound false. “My . . . Spanish is not yet skilled enough to—”

  “Of course it isn’t,” Cecil said, far too happily. And then to my astonishment he proceeded to lie to me about everything except de Feria’s mockery of the castle guards and his shocking words about the Queen, and the fact that the two men were to exchange letters. Only, in Cecil’s retelling, they were letters from King Philip of Spain—not the pope, as Rafe had claimed. Why the lie? The Spanish had no long-standing grudge against England—especially given that King Philip had still harbored hopes of marrying Elizabeth until she’d rejected him scant months earlier. The Catholics and the Protestants, however, were very much in the midst of an unofficial war that had lasted for years, worsening now because a new Protestant Queen had taken the throne of England. Mary Tudor’s reign of persecution had been considered by the Catholics to be an act of God. Now Elizabeth’s rise to power was an affront to that same God. Whisperings of a Catholic plot to dethrone Elizabeth had started buzzing even before she had been crowned Queen. For the pope to take part in that plot would make a certain deadly sense.

  So why was Cecil lying about the origins of the letters? Was it merely to catch me out should I share the tale with others?

  I studied Cecil closely, memorizing his face and his eyes as he gave me his completely false accounting of Rafe’s and de Feria’s conversation. I’d recognize that deceiving look when Cecil lied again, without question. “You may rest assured that the guard will not be slack tonight,” he finished, ripe with satisfaction.

  I decided to test my newly minted skills at identifying his deceit. “Was the guard slack the night of Marie Claire’s death?” I asked.

  Cecil paused a moment, the distant sounds of the revel wafting toward us down the long hallway. “What do you know of the maid Marie’s death—and who told you?”

  “Two ladies were talking at the ball,” I said, shrugging. I could lie better than he. “They said she was found lying against a wall on Saint George’s Day, after a ball not unlike this. Strangled.” And mutilated.

  “Not strangled, precisely,” Cecil said, his tone hard. In this, I knew immediately, he was not deceiving me. “Marie Claire was killed by garrote, a very effective but particularly brutal way to die. You should be familiar with it by now.”

  I nodded. Garroting was silent and quick, and did not require as much strength as ordinary strangulation. In truth, Marie’s attacker could have been a woman, with a weapon like that. But no woman, surely, would disfigure another woman’s face so horribly. I shuddered. Would she?

  “But we’re not here to discuss Marie.” Cecil sat back in his seat, his attention shifting back to my report. “These letters the young count is carrying could be of import. Rafe Luis Medina is the son of Marquess Juan Carlos and the Marchioness Isabelle. We know that Isabelle spent two years in King Henry’s court as an attendant to Catherine of Aragon. She would have made friends here, Spanish sympathizers. Some of the letters could be from King Philip to Isabelle’s friends. And they could contain information that would harm the Queen.”

  But once again, Rafe had said the letters had been from the pope—not the king. Still, I couldn’t betray that I knew that. “Surely Isabelle would not have any friends still in the court,” I protested.

  He tapped the pages. “Not directly, perhaps, but where there is money, there are always friends. And we know nothing of this Count de Martine, other than his parentage and his schooling.”

  “He is a nobleman.”

  Cecil snorted. “He is perhaps more than that. Think on it. The Queen has been in power since late fall. Yet suddenly this young man arrives, highly placed in the Spanish delegation. Where did he come from, and why is he suddenly here?”

  Unbidden, the image of a maid slumped against the wall flashed across my mind, her face bloody, her gown torn. But Count de Martine had only just arrived from Spain. He could not have had anything to do with Marie Claire’s murder.

  Could he?

  “All courtiers, whether Englishman or foreigner, have the potential to be enemies to the Crown,” Cecil said, as if he’d read my thoughts. He hesitated a beat, then faced me square, his eyes now fully on my face.

  “You have done well, Miss Fellowes. So well that you will now have another assignment, of utmost secrecy, to be carried out within the fortnight,” he said. “You may not share this information with anyone.”

  I nodded, fully expecting him to reiterate the Queen’s command from this morning, to ferret out whoever was behind the disturbances within Windsor Castle, and I was impatient to be gone. I didn’t care that the Queen had decided to include Cecil in her plotting after all. That made perfect sense. Instead I thought of the maid Marie, and how her journeys for Cecil and the Queen had been secretive too. And how she was now dead.

  “Yes?” I asked. The silence was somehow worse than being bored by the repetition.

  Cecil still did not speak, and for a moment I thought that he might have decided against this additional request, that perhaps I had not impressed him with my first assignment after all, and this further charge would be, in his mind, too much.

  Well, he could go sip his sorrow with a long spoon. The Queen had already given me the task. I didn’t need his approval to serve her. Nevertheless, just for practice, I held myself perfectly still for a moment more, waiting him out. He finally spoke.

  “As I said, all courtiers, no matter their country, could be of risk to the Queen,” Cecil began again with his customary care. “And not only to the Queen, but to England. We, as the Queen’s protection, must serve her even when she might think our service is unnecessary. We cannot fail her, in any hour—especially when she might rather that we did fail. Do you understand?”

  I gaped at him. This was not what I’d expected him to say. “When would the Queen ever consider our protection of her to be unnecessary—or want us to fail to defend her?”

  The question seemed to pain Cecil, and deep furrows appeared between his brows. His face sank into a scowl. “The Queen is new to her role, and after all the strife and struggle of her early years, she has embraced her royal station with enthusiasm—and all the luxuries and perceived freedoms it affords her.”

  “As well she should,” I protested. I did not like where this was going, not at all. The Queen had made allusions to those who might not consider her fit to rule, but surely Cecil was not one of those ingrates. “She was held prisoner in the Tower, Sir William, when she was only a girl! She was kept under house arrest for months, not knowing her fate. Her life was filled with one prison or another since she was but a babe of three years old. She is entitled to all the luxury and freedoms the Crown brings her. She is our Queen.”

  “And if those freedoms put England herself at risk?” Cecil asked.

  He had taken the stance of an instructor now, and I pulled my emotions back, wary. “The Queen would never put England at risk.”

  “Not intentionally, no—”

  “Pray, Sir William, not ever,” I said. “It is her entire life; her people are her only concern.” I found it unnerving to say these words to one who should already know them better than I did.

  Cecil’s eyes narrowed in the
semidarkness. “Then you are in luck. The assignment I am giving you will prove your point masterfully.”

  There was danger here, and I waited, not wanting to commit myself. Cecil had no idea that the Queen had given me a private commission, of that I was certain. What possible assignment could he have in mind—and would it counter the Queen’s own commands? Surely not.

  After a moment he went on. “I am concerned that the Queen may be . . . endangering herself with the personal company she keeps,” Cecil said heavily. “I would like to be proven wrong in this concern. Accordingly, you will uncover the Queen’s most intimate secrets and report—”

  “Sir William!” I jerked back, aghast. “You cannot be serious.”

  My shock seemed to irritate him further. “You will be given access to the Queen’s most private conversations to learn what may be learned. I want to know exactly who is with her and when, and what they say—to the word, to the exact word, and not as a general recollection.”

  “But I could never—”

  Cecil’s voice was merciless. “You will furthermore complete this assignment once within the next fortnight by being placed in the Queen’s bedchamber, and then again as often as I have the need for you to do so—”

  “But she will know me, Sir William,” I argued, grasping for reason. “She will know I am in her chambers.”

  “Of course she will know you are there!” Cecil snapped. “You are an actress, not a ghost. And as an actress your role is to make sure the Queen trusts you implicitly—that she doesn’t suspect for a moment that you are watching her, or that you would ever betray her, no matter what she says or does.”

  Betray her! How could I ever betray the Queen? She was the one who saved me, when Cecil wanted me locked away without a key!

  Again, as if he read my thoughts, Cecil provided the answer. “And if you dare speak a word of this to her, to anyone, I will not waste my time with a public humiliation for your precious Golden Rose.” He spoke the name of the troupe with deliberate disdain, as if my friends were beetles beneath his feet. “They will be hung on the gibbets to die as common traitors. All of them.” He scowled at me. “Starting with the boy.”