Maid of Secrets

by Jennifer McGowan

  Jane looked at me, and I could tell she wanted to explore the corridor further. “No,” I said resolutely. “We can’t afford getting caught there. And any Spaniard we’d find in the dungeons proper wouldn’t be someone we could report on.”

  She sighed, turning the other direction. “Very well. But these sconces were lit recently. They haven’t burned down much. Why?”

  “Perhaps Cecil and Walsingham are expecting trouble from the foreign dignitaries?”

  An uneasy chill slid through me as I said the words, and we both picked up our pace. Suddenly, sneaking around in the dungeon corridors didn’t seem like the best of ideas.

  We moved as one, bent over slightly in case the ceiling height suddenly changed. I held my hands out in front of me like a blind woman. I had gotten good at this process, which is why I went first, my feet somehow knowing where to go even in the blackest corridor. But I felt a newfound respect—and horror—for those who had been truly blinded by accident or birth or injury. It would be no way to live.

  I swiped the air just as my feet came into hard contact with a stair riser, and we both tumbled forward in a flurry of skirts. I smacked against the chiseled stairs with my hands, managing to turn my face only at the last minute to avoid cracking my teeth. As it was, I knocked my temple hard enough that bright lights exploded against the backs of my eyes, at the same time that Jane crashed into me, shoving me for a second time against the cold stone.

  “Staircase,” I moaned, smiling weakly as Jane giggled.

  “Are you well?” she managed as she peeled herself off me and I struggled upright, half-crawling up the stairs. I felt my head and neck for blood, and found none. A knot was already forming above my ear, but at least my hair would cover it.

  “I’ll live,” I said, still climbing. The staircase went straight up, ending in a wide platform and another door, but this one possessed no obvious peepholes to give a clue what might lie beyond. We turned around, and both of us slid to a seated position, catching our breaths before making the final run.

  Jane laid her hand upon the door. “It’s warm and it’s full day outside, with a hot sun beating down,” she said. “It’s got to lead to the outdoors, but I don’t remember any unaccounted-for doors in the castle’s exterior walls.”

  I didn’t either, and I’d paced the grounds often enough to know each stone by heart. “Are we up high enough for the North Terrace?” I asked. “It didn’t feel like the stairs had gone up that long.”

  “No, but . . . there is something here.” Groaning, Jane stood, and I hauled myself up beside her. “Lock,” she said a minute later.

  I took out my picklocks and bent to the task. A few moments later we were rewarded with a telltale click.

  We opened the door a hair’s breadth, wincing as bright sunlight poured in.

  “God’s teeth!” Jane hissed, pulling back as I also flinched away. Once our eyes had adjusted, we peeked out again through narrow eyes.

  Wide, rolling grasslands greeted us, ending in a copse of trees.

  We were outside the castle.

  Free.

  Jane and I pushed the door open a bit farther, meeting the resistance of some artfully placed bushes. Opening it just enough to escape, we peeked outside, then pulled back again, staring at each other. The sun still warmed our faces.

  “Your troupe is still in Windsor,” Jane said, putting voice to what I had myself been thinking.

  “It is,” I said. I smoothed my skirts and looked north to where the Thames lay, close enough to see the boats clustered upon it, Eton in the far distance across the river.

  “You could be in London by nightfall,” she observed.

  “I could,” I said. We fell silent for a moment, each lost in our own thoughts. I could leave, easily, with just the clothes on my back. I had no money that I was leaving behind, no belongings but Grandfather’s book, which Jane could secret out to me. I was far more adrift inside the castle than I was without.

  “Why do you stay?” she asked, interrupting my reverie.

  “Why do you?” I returned. “I’m not the only person who knows the world outside of these walls. You also were not born to castle life, in service to the Queen.”

  Jane chuckled. “True enough,” she said easily, not affronted by my candor. “But I will die in that service.” She spoke with far too much certainty.

  “Why?” We’d pulled back inside the shadowed alcove more firmly now, and could see that the platform was broader than we’d first thought, almost a mini corridor. The sun was still upon us, and I looked at Jane’s dust-smeared face, knowing that I looked scant better. We would have to find somewhere to clean up before we reentered the castle.

  If we reentered the castle. I thought of all the people I had in the world; the thirty-odd members of the Golden Rose, who perhaps had not missed me, all of them, but who would still be happy to see me return, if only for my pick-pocketing skills. And some of them I’d be happy to see as well.

  Jane had not responded, and I glanced at her again, even as her mouth twitched into a soft, inscrutable smile.

  She shrugged as she noticed me watching. “I have nowhere else to go, Rat. No one to go home to, no one to care about.” She sighed, glancing away. “I am better off remaining here.”

  Impulsively I reached out for her hand, and after a moment she took mine, still not meeting my eyes but instead gazing at the walls of our small alcove. In the light of the midday sun, I saw the fine scars that scored the backs of Jane’s hands, speaking of trials I could only guess at. We were more different than ever, but we were forging a lasting bond, in our way.

  Who am I, truly?

  I was someone who could make friends.

  Jane cocked her head, chuckled, then pulled her hand away to rap against another panel of wood. It sounded with a hollow thwock. “There’s another door off this corridor, this one leading along the castle walls,” she said, victorious. She looked back at me, her eyes now alert, her momentary sadness gone. “You want to see where it goes?”

  And with that our decision was made. This day, we would remain in the castle.

  Within minutes we’d sketched a new extension to our map, using the sunlight to get the proper dimensions of the entryway, and stepping quickly outside to get a fix on where it would be in the exterior castle wall, should ever we need to exit—or enter—the castle this way again.

  It was always good to have an escape plan, I thought. Even one we were not quite yet willing to use.

  We opened the new door slightly before we closed the external door, but it was as black as pitch beyond. I wasn’t in the mood to run into another flight of stairs. “Candle?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” Jane agreed. She too had no interest in worsening her appearance. There was no telling where we’d end up.

  We relit the candle, closed both doors carefully, and found ourselves in a new passage that ran straight and true to the west. It was, we found, far less well-traveled than the corridor we’d just exited, but more hospitable to the creatures of darkness. Not entirely a pleasant discovery.

  “This has to extend along the outside wall,” Jane said thoughtfully after we’d walked for some minutes. “We must be near the cloisters now.”

  “If so, I do not expect that the current residents avail themselves of this passageway to regularly escape the castle.”

  “I’m sure they don’t know it exists.” Jane sounded happy about that. Secrets held were always more intriguing than secrets shared.

  We came to the first door a few moments later, and we stared at it, perplexed.

  It was not really a door so much as a walled-off crawl space, a panel with a number inscribed beside it, carved into the stone. The number six.

  “Seems an odd place for a back door,” I said, and Jane cocked her head.

  “Number six, number six . . . ,” she murmured as I got down beside her. “I know that number, in the Canon’s Cloister, the one with the flower garden. If it’s the one I’m thinking of.”


  Recognition flooded through me. I remembered number six as well, from my walks with Sophia. One of the lovelier homes in this cloister, it was tended with care, and the flowers seemed to bloom more robustly even in the fading light of day.

  It was also a home rented out to visiting nobility who found themselves in Windsor for an extended stay. And its current occupant was Lord Brighton.

  “That’s Brighton’s residence,” I said. “Maybe we should go farther along.”

  But Jane was already positioning her fingers around the panel. “We’ve been away too long as it is. We both know that Cecil will eventually come up with some pointless task for us to do, just to amuse himself. If this is number six and Lord Brighton is not here, we have a chance of cleaning up. Brighton should not be in his household midday; he should be at the Queen’s court. We cannot say the same for homes with full families.”

  I couldn’t gainsay her reasoning, and I bent to help her pry open the panel. It was old and encrusted, but it finally popped out with a snap, and we fell back upon her dress in the dust.

  “We’re going to need to get into a hair-pulling brawl in the middle of the Lower Ward to explain our appearance,” she muttered. After wiping off her hands on her skirts, she leaned forward again.

  This entranceway was lined in wood, not stone, and was just big enough for one person. The panel at the far end of the entrance, some three feet away, showed a soft rim of light at its seams.

  “Locked?” I whispered, and she shook her head.

  “As long as it’s not blocked. Let’s pray Lord Brighton didn’t come to Windsor with a household of furniture.”

  She crept forward, then was out again a moment later. “Hinged and locked, but the lock is two-way.”

  We traded positions, and she picked up the panel we’d already pried free. It had handles on the inside that she could use to easily draw it back into place.

  The lock itself wasn’t even much of a lock, more a delaying tactic than something that could keep someone out. “It’s free,” I said a moment later.

  “Any sound?”

  “Not a whisper.”

  “There are times when you just do something,” Jane said with a grin.

  “And if you get caught, you get caught,” I agreed.

  I pulled the panel open, and we slid into the middle of Lord Brighton’s study.

  The house was fully silent, and Jane clucked with satisfaction as she pulled the panel back into the wall. It blended flush, almost inscrutable in the dull grey light filtering in through the leaded glass windows, and she gazed at it, serene. “Now that is a thing of beauty.”

  I caught sight of our reflections in a looking glass. “And we are not. We look like two cats far the worse off for the fight.” I turned back to her. “You’ve got cobwebs in your hair,” I advised as I pulled away the offending strands.

  “And you’ve got three inches of dirt caked on your face.” Jane looked around, blinking owlishly. “Let’s find water—soap—something. There has to be something here.”

  “Agreed.” We set off in search of water, and found two buckets inside the home’s tidy kitchen, beside a large basin. Next to the kitchen sat flats of plants, thriving in the sunlight.

  “We can water the plants with this after we’re through,” I observed as Jane dunked her head in the water. “And set the bucket aside with the others. With luck, he won’t notice that it moved.”

  “Urghh,” she said, the sound of pure pleasure in just being clean again. I grinned, looking around the room. There were some papers on the table, an open file of legal documents. With the nonchalance born of long years of nosiness, I lifted a clean long-handled spoon and moved the pages around. I couldn’t risk getting any of the castle dust on Lord Brighton’s papers.

  The second parchment I moved caught my eye. I thanked Anna a hundred times over for her time and patience in finally teaching me to read. But what I was looking at still made no sense.

  “What is this?” I murmured, loud enough to garner me an answering noise from Jane, whose head was still buried in the water bucket.

  It looked like a christening record, and I frowned at the names marching across the page. Lady Sophia Elizabeth Brighton Manchester, born 1545, was christened at the church of—

  Lady Sophia Elizabeth . . . Brighton?

  I shuffled through other pages, finding reference after reference that set me on my heels, even if I could not understand them all. One Lord Theoditus Manchester, Baron of Westchurch, a lost infant daughter, the death record of a young wife, the careful medical opinions of doctors throughout the English countryside claiming the mother’s illness was born of a broken heart. There was a beautifully painted locket of a dark-haired woman with violet eyes. Instructions to the manager of Manchester’s estate. And last, most chillingly, the baron’s final will and testament.

  I was still staring at the pages when Jane finally came over, availing herself of one of Lord Brighton’s towels to dry her newly clean hair. “What is it you’re looking at, Rat?”

  “I know why Lord Brighton is so fixed on ensuring Sophia is officially off the matrimonial market,” I said, surprised I could even form the words.

  Jane snorted a cynical laugh. “Because he’s a lonely old man?”

  “No,” I said. “Because he’s her father.”

  That stopped her. “Her father?” She shook her head in astonishment. “What are you talking about?” She looked down at the papers spread out in front of me. “This says Manchester.”

  “I think that’s his real name. Look here—this Manchester had a wife who died, a daughter who was kidnapped. And then he died. Here’s his signature on his will. And here’s Lord Brighton’s signature on his manager’s statement.”

  Jane pursed her lips together. “They’re the same hand.”

  “Yes. And now he’s in the court, declaring his hand for a girl who could be his daughter . . . because she is his daughter.”

  “But he will be found out!” Jane protested. “He could be hung for a deception like that.”

  “Imagine yourself in his place.” I shook my head. “Your beloved daughter was taken away from you when she was very young and raised as the ward of a court insider. You finally find her, only to learn she’s in service to the Queen, with rumors swirling around that she’s on the marriage block—and that, quite possibly, she may have the gift of the Sight. You know the Queen will never let her go, and will never believe you over the man who raised your daughter, a man who is her trusted friend. What would you do to protect your daughter?”

  Jane blew out a long breath. “It’s still a terrible risk.”

  “It is indeed.” I thought of Sophia’s fears for the man who’d claimed her hand. Fears not of him, but for him. Had she guessed Lord Brighton was her father? Did she know the Queen would likely execute the man for treason should she ever learn that he intended to deceive the court in such a public and bold manner? And with her gift of the Sight beginning to manifest, did Sophia already know the outcome of her father’s desperate ploy?

  No wonder she kept fainting.

  If I’d thought the midsummer ball was a grand affair, I was completely overwhelmed by the gaudy revel of the masque.

  There were easily three hundred members of the court in attendance, and every delegate from across the Continent, it seemed. I suspected the inns in Windsor had no reason to stay open tonight, so many of their patrons were now drinking the Queen’s ale. There was music at all four corners of the Presence Chamber, which gave the impression that one was drifting out of one room and into the next, without ever leaving the ballroom floor. The ladies-in-waiting had already performed their night-goddess dance, and it was every bit as tragic as I’d feared it would be.

  I wandered through the Presence Chamber, taking it all in, my gypsy dress flowing around me like a costume fit for a fairy queen. Still grateful for her new assignment and believing I had helped her secure it, Beatrice had found the gorgeous gown in the depths of her en
dless clothes cupboard, the colors shifting from rose to crimson under the blazing sconces and chandeliers of the great hall, set off by soft black strips of cloth and dozens of appliquéd roses. I’d complemented the gown with my own handmade silk mask, complete with requisite eyeholes. The gown’s roses roiled and tumbled with each step that I took, and I found myself admiring it more than paying attention to my long list of conversations to follow.

  I’d already overheard the faintly annoyed censure of three clergymen in long, dour robes. Their conversation was not useful, fixed as it was on the state of Elizabeth’s court, which we were now seeing at its scandalous best. I had sidestepped two conversations between prominent lords of parliament, who in their overweening—and loud—pride could have been tracked by anyone with an interest. My ability allowed me to memorize their words all of a piece, but it was clear that the Royal Marriage Question still hung heavily on the minds of the country’s caretakers. And revels like these, as they showed the Queen as a wayward young miss and the bawdiness of her court as the height of impropriety, planted deep and festering seeds of worry in the minds of her more levelheaded countrymen. If the Queen wanted to demonstrate to the Catholics that the Protestants were a sensible and God-fearing lot, she was failing miserably.

  And I was about to listen in on the most telling conversation of all.

  Robert Dudley, Master of the Horse, was one of the easiest courtiers in the room to identify. Impeccably dressed in brilliant cloth of gold, his trunks slashed with velvet and satin, his hose of finest silk, and his short cape a rich crimson, he looked like a prince in the making, and several whispered words underscored that perception as I made my way across the hall. Robert Dudley had more idle enemies than passionate ones, but he also had more enemies of any stripe than friends.

  As I walked, conversation wormed through the crowd that the Queen had fallen in love with Dudley, with others arguing surely not. I grew weary of the chatter, and wondered how the Queen herself must feel. Always on the edge of conversations about her—and doubtless vaguely disappointed when she realized the most fervent gossip was not about her politics, but about her potential paramours. Unbidden, the beginning of a new couplet came to mind: All of them hunting for aught that’s amiss.