Maid of Secrets

by Jennifer McGowan

  I tensed, even as I obediently picked up my own goblet, staring at the deep red liquid within. The Queen’s cup was distinctively different from our own, encrusted with jewels fit for her royal hand. The Queen’s cup had also been previously filled with wine, while ours had been filled just now from a separate carafe.

  We were going to be drugged.

  I knew it as surely as I was standing there. Six ladies. Six empty cups. The Queen’s wine in a separate goblet, ours poured later, by her own hand. Who in the kitchens had done the deed? And how much had they drugged the wine? I pried a kerchief out of my sleeve and edged behind the women. I needed time!

  “Your Grace, you look so lovely!” cooed the woman in front of me. Compliments immediately followed all around, giving me an unexpected opening. I turned slightly away, shoving my kerchief into my cup. The wine stained the linen like a crimson sickness, and I’d barely yanked the cloth out again before the Queen raised her goblet.

  “To a successful masque!” the Queen cried out, and upended her cup. We all drained our cups, and I once again felt her eyes upon me, fever-bright. Despite my care I was still forced to swallow some of the wine, which tasted curiously sweet to my now trained palate.

  The chatter between the ladies grew merrier, their voices too loud, almost jarring to my ears. We scurried around the Queen in our carefully orchestrated dance, but at my first opportunity I drifted over to the hearth to stoke the fire with a poking rod. In one swift movement, I dropped the wine-soaked cloth among the embers and watched it catch fire. No one noticed the sudden flare.

  And then the Queen was in her bed with the curtains drawn and the rest of us retired to our sleeping mats, to give our monarch the illusion of privacy without risking her safety for a moment. It was, I thought as I laid myself down and willed myself to defeat the drowsiness clawing at my eyelids, a masterful game.

  One by one my fellow ladies of the bedchamber fell asleep, emitting five sets of light snores. Only five, thank heavens, because I was still awake, though it was a close thing. Even with the very little amount of the sleeping draught that I’d ingested, I had to fight sleep off as though it were a smothering bear.

  For her part, the Queen did not sleep either. She tossed and turned in her bed, then became unnaturally silent, with the stillness of a crouching cat. And not two hours after we’d all said our good nights, I heard what I had most feared: the swish of bed curtains parting, the pad of careful feet, and finally the scrape of a panel moved aside—the same clicking rasp that I’d heard in Lord Brighton’s house as Jane and I had unhinged the hidden panel in his wall. I kept myself locked in place, every nerve in my body wrapped tight.

  The Queen was leaving her own bedchamber.

  No, no, a thousand times no!

  I peeked over the edge of my blanket, but she was already gone. I waited just a few heartbeats, then slid off my mat, bunching up my bedclothes to make it look like I was still lying fast asleep. I moved quickly across the room to where the panel remained ajar. The Queen had not tried to move it back into place. She’d done this before, I knew immediately. You did not grow lax the first few times that you duped your keepers, only after regular practice.

  How many times had the Queen snuck through the castle’s hidden corridors—and how had she learned of them without Cecil knowing as well? She had only been a baby of three when her own mother had been killed, and that had been long years ago. Had Edward told her of these passages—or Mary? Somehow, I doubted either monarch would have trusted their sister with such information. Then who—a servant? A craftsman, come to work on the castle renovation?

  There would be time later to puzzle through that. For now, I slipped into the corridor behind the Queen, seeing her candle bob in the distance, which allowed me to follow her with ease.

  The riddle of passageways should have confused me, but I’d been this way before. And when the Queen stopped and moved through a doorway set flush against the corridor wall, my deepest fears were realized.

  Saint George’s Hall.

  I gave the Queen a moment more to move deeper into the room, while I hesitated in the corridor. Then I realized that I might not be the only person using this passageway, and I hastened forward and slipped into the abandoned hall like a ghost.

  The Queen’s candle had been extinguished, but I still saw her clearly, far down the hall, heading toward a sea of hanging tapestries bunched against the far wall. I had noticed the tapestries before, but now I saw them for what they were. A room within a room, all hung with ancient cloths and silks. With growing alarm I followed behind, careful not to get too close.

  Then, ahead of us, the heavy draperies split wide, and a rough, sensual voice broke through the silence, quickening my heart even as I felt my stomach twist. It was a voice I’d recognize anywhere: the rounded syllables, the sharp inflections, the weight of double meaning in every careless phrase. And other than one gilded with a Spanish accent, it was absolutely the last voice I’d hoped to hear this night.

  “My Queen,” Robert Dudley whispered hoarsely.

  Whole centuries passed before the curtains parted again, and I had died a hundred times over in my misery. How long had the Queen been in this room? A bare quarter hour? Half the night? There was no way for me to know. Time seemed to have turned around on itself, and even the faint tolling of the tower clock had begun to speak in riddles. Had it just rung two bells—or had I imagined it?

  It mattered not, in any case. My heart was now a cold, wretched stone—my stomach so eaten with bile and anxiety that I thought I might never take food again.

  What Cecil had feared was true. More than what he feared, in fact. More than he could ever imagine, I suspected, in his wildest, most worried dreams.

  The Queen strolled by me close enough for me to touch her, then slipped back into the corridor. Behind her I trailed listlessly, too shocked to think. It seemed to take us far less time to return to the safety of her chambers than it had for us to leave it. As we approached our destination, however, I realized my mistake.

  The Queen would return to her bedchamber via the secret panel. She would go inside. And then she would close the panel behind her, and set its tiny clasp.

  Locking me out.

  Panicked, I cast about the corridor for a stone, a brick—anything I might use as some sort of distraction. There was nothing. The corridors were empty, as blank as a piece of parchment, and I dared not make too much noise here, lest she turn and catch me out.

  I stumbled on the solution with only the greatest of misery.

  With trembling fingers, I pulled out my precious set of picklocks. The treasure I had kept from my past, that had proven to be so valuable in my present. A gift from my grandfather. And now my best chance at survival.

  No sooner had the Queen navigated the final turn in the corridor and begun making haste toward the entryway to her own chamber, than I made my move. I sidled up behind her, and just as she bent to duck through the opening in the panel, I hurled the picklocks over her head, far down the shadowed corridor. They struck a far wall and fell to the stone floor with a satisfying clatter, shockingly loud in the silence.

  The Queen straightened so fast, I could hear the bones in her back crack. She held the candle aloft, the beginning of a sound on her lips. A haughty Who goes there! I was sure, or Present yourself!

  Instead she fell still, and I tensed. A smart woman—or a less bold one—would have dashed back into her room and buried herself under the covers. The Queen, however, was the Queen. She had already proven herself audacious. And her actions this night had also proven that her better sense could be ruled by her emotions, at least in this one area.

  She set off down the corridor, after my picklocks. I prayed she would not find them, but there was no time for me to see. As soon as her royal skirts cleared the opening in the corridor, I dashed up to it, flung myself through the hole, and scrambled across the room to where the ladies of the bedchamber lay sleeping off their drugged wine. Though my entire bo
dy shook with exertion and excitement, I slid onto my assigned mat and dragged the covers back over me.

  A few moments later I heard the Queen enter the room, and my stomach tightened with worry. But nothing jingled in her hands, and I allowed myself the tiniest hope that my picklocks were still there, hidden in the darkness, waiting for me like a faithful friend. The only friend I had left in this place of stone and secrets.

  I struggled to maintain measured breathing as the Queen made her way over to our sleeping group. She stood there, and I could feel her presence radiate around her, exhilarated and majestic. Proud. She had won! She had succeeded in escaping the clutches of her keepers for a few precious moments, to pursue her private agenda.

  Whether she gloated over her ladies or silently thanked us for being so easily fooled, I couldn’t say. But I was about to break in two from the strain of remaining quiet, when the Queen finally turned away and walked over to her own enormous bed, slid in between the covers, and dropped the curtains once more around her, safe in her royal cocoon.

  Only then did she allow herself the smallest of sounds—her first in hours, besides the hushed and earnest talk she’d shared with Dudley, a conversation that would remain in my thoughts for an eternity. Dudley had pressed the Queen hard, suggesting that he might serve her not only as courtier and lover but as king and consort! And Dudley was married! It was an impossible thing, and she had rebuffed his pleas with gentle words that still left the door open wide for his continued suit to flourish. That had been bad enough. But what she expressed now was far, far worse.

  It was the tiniest breath of happiness. A soft, wondering sigh. The kind of sigh that captured all of passion’s sweet torment in its brief and fluttering hold, before letting it free once more.

  The Queen was not just dallying with the wrong man at the wrong time, I realized, or entertaining a flatterer to ease the burden of her rule.

  No. The Queen was deeply, hopelessly, irretrievably in love.

  And I was no longer merely undone . . . .

  I was lost.

  Dawn finally stretched over the horizon. A servant slipped into the room, and I made as if I’d woken at once, leaping from my mat to serve and protect.

  At my movement, the Queen swept back the curtains of her bed. “Yes, Meg?” she asked, a faint smile on her face.

  “I, oh— I . . . My apologies, Your Grace,” I said, stuttering. Behind me the other ladies of the bedchamber were stirring. “I heard a sound and—” I shook my head, hard, feigning that I was muzzy-headed. “I feel a bit . . . queer,” I said softly.

  She was watching me with keen eyes. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes—yes, of course, Your Grace. I just . . . I feel . . . odd.”

  She nodded briskly. “It was a busy night for you. Go forth. You’re relieved of morning duties, since you’d be no use at all in preparing me for the hunt. If Mathilde is not recovered, I will expect you here when I return at the tenth hour.”

  I murmured thanks far more sincere than she could have known, pulled on my skirts and kirtle, and fled.

  But I did not go to Cecil’s chambers. And I did not go back to my own room either. It was early still, the morning after a grand revel. The only focus of the guards would be on the hunters and their horses—not the guests who’d danced long into the night. There would be no one to track my movements. It would take only a moment to fetch my picklocks back . . . .

  The doors to Saint George’s Hall remained open, the only light to brighten the abandoned hall coming from the windows as before, this time a trickle of the sun’s earliest rays over the walls of the castle. By this meager light I could easily see the panel set into the wall, now that I knew what I was looking for. I had only to pry the panel off once more, slip inside, and then retrace my steps back to the Queen’s chambers and move several yards beyond. The picklocks would still be there, on the floor of the corridor. Waiting for me.

  I’d almost reached the panel, when a flash of metal whisked in front of my eyes. “Looking for this?”

  Rafe.

  I stopped short, yanking the picklocks out of Rafe’s fingers. “What are you doing here!” I hissed, turning sharply around. “Where did you find these? And where have you been?”

  His grin was irrepressible. “I suspect I found them where you dropped them, in the corridor behind the Queen’s chambers,” he said, answering only the second of my questions. “And you should keep a closer eye. Royal picklocks are not tinkers’ tools. These are among the finest I’ve ever seen.”

  “What?” I looked at him, then down at the gleaming metal in my hand. “These aren’t royal picklocks.” They were simply a gift from my grandfather.

  “I assure you that they are.” He plucked the picklocks from my hand and pointed to a tiny crest near the tip of the delicate keys. “Looks like old King Henry’s seal, in fact, but it’s too dark to tell. Either way, they’re worth a royal ransom.” He handed them back to me, and I stared at them in confusion, pulling myself back to the issues at hand only with extraordinary discipline.

  “But how did you know where to find them—and how did you get into the passage in the first place?” I stamped my foot in utter frustration. It seemed to work for Beatrice. “And what are you doing here?”

  My voice rose nearly out of a whisper with my last question, and he put a finger to his lips to quiet me. He nodded toward the chapel. “If you must know, I’m looking for someone.”

  At that moment a small, muffled cry came from the chapel, whether from pleasure or pain, it was impossible to tell. Rafe grimaced. “And I believe I just found him.”

  I froze, horror rushing through me. Surely the Queen could not be so bold as to meet Robert Dudley twice in one night—I’d left her with her attendants all awake! I looked at Rafe. “You cannot go in there,” I said earnestly.

  “I must.” A brutal crack echoed on the heels of a muffled cry, both sounds emanating from the chapel. “And I believe that’s my cue.”

  With that he turned and ran toward the chapel, with me hard on his heels. We rushed forward even as a tall, slender man burst free from the chapel and barreled through us, and another man’s voice, low and guttural, shouted out in triumph from beyond the chapel doors. Caught between chasing the first fleeing man and saving the Queen, Rafe hesitated just a moment, but I did not. I sprinted by him and flew through the doorway.

  The scene in front of me was clear. And it wasn’t the Queen.

  Lady Amelia lay collapsed on the chapel floor in a huddled ball, her face cut, her beautiful ball gown soaked with a tight arc of crimson. Standing above her was the moon-faced Spaniard I’d seen just hours before with de Quadra and de Feria, but now with a knife in his hand.

  I barely heard a distant rousing cry well behind us. The fleeing Spaniard had doubtless alerted the castle to cover his own escape. We would be awash in royal guardsmen in minutes.

  Moon Face looked up, apparently not having heard the cry of his comrade . . . but he seemed to recognize Rafe. He grunted in greeting, then looked at me, his face cracking into an unholy grin. “¿Quieres que matar a ella también?”

  “No!” Rafe spit back, even as I realized that the Spanish sentence the man had just spoken had included the phrase “kill her too.” “Kill her,” as in kill me. Rafe reached out and shoved me behind him, and the two men began speaking in rapid Spanish, but I twisted out of Rafe’s grasp. That was Lady Amelia lying there, half-dead, it appeared, her throat already purpling with bruises. I barely paid attention to them yelling at each other. I could not focus on their conversation, not with Lady Amelia harmed.

  I moved to dash to her aid, but suddenly the man was right in front of me, his blade flashing out. I blocked his blow with a sharp upward thrust of my arm. The feint did little more than allow me to stagger to the side, but it startled Moon Face so much that he stumbled forward, missing me completely. Rafe hissed another command, but the man came at me again. I dodged once more, my training taking hold, and I rolled out of harm’
s way even as Rafe jumped into the fight.

  Whirling around, the black-clad man threw his knife at Rafe, who ducked the blade and charged the Spaniard, his own rapier pulled.

  “Run!” Rafe shouted, though I would do no such thing. I could not leave Lady Amelia behind!

  The two blocked my path in a whirling sword fight. Rafe pressed forward against his attacker like a man possessed, his hands a rush of steel. In addition to his sword, he somehow held a second blade in his left hand, a short, thick dagger that he was able to wield with jabbing spikes whenever their battle brought the two men within a few feet of each other. Rafe connected once, then again, but Moon Face fought back with a fury borne more of desperation than skill. It was just a matter of time before Rafe finished him, I thought, but Rafe pulled back from the killing blow, speaking in rushed Spanish, as if he sought to get answers rather than blood from the man.

  Moon Face responded with a feral bellow, and they came at each other again, finally opening a space for me to rush past them to Lady Amelia. I bent over her hastily, trying to determine if she still breathed.

  Lady Amelia’s eyes were open, but her mouth was slack. Only the faintest of heartbeats thrummed beneath my hand. Though she’d been sliced across the neck, the wound was not deep. Her throat was wreathed in dark angry welts, however, as if she’d been strangled by a man’s bare hands. The killer had moved beyond garrotes, it appeared, to a more personal approach to killing.

  I knelt, cradling Lady Amelia’s head in my arms, still searching for injuries. Her right temple was already a knot of bruises, and I realized that the crack I had heard had likely been intended as her killing blow. The facial cuts were just for show, to shock whoever found the body. They certainly did the job.

  “Don’t die, Lady Amelia,” I whispered as I lay her down again. “Don’t you dare die.” I did not know what had brought the woman to this dark, abandoned chapel, but she didn’t deserve this.

  Nobody deserved this.