The Lady of Secrets

by Susan Carroll

  “No, I promise you I won’t breathe a word of anything you have told me.”

  “Thank you.” Bidding her a gruff good night, Tom turned to go.

  Meg hesitated a moment before darting after him. The boy was already out the door and halfway down the first flight of stairs when she called out to him.

  “Tom.”

  The boy paused midstep to look back at her. “Aye, mistress?”

  “I don’t suppose in all his confidences, Dr. Blackwood has ever spoken of his family?”

  Tom pursed his lips and Meg could clearly read what the boy was thinking, that he had already spilled far too many of his master’s secrets.

  “Please, Tom. I have every hope your master will recover, but with him this ill, it would be better if someone of his kin were informed.”

  “Perhaps so, mistress. But the doctor never talks of his family, even when he’s been drinking.”

  “Oh.” Meg nodded in disappointment. She bade Tom good night and started to close the door when the boy charged back up the stairs.

  He appeared to wrestle with his conscience a moment before blurting out, “There has always been talk that the master is old Armagil Black’s son.”

  “Armagil Black?”

  “Well it stands to reason, doesn’t it, mistress, the names being so similar? How many men do you know who have been christened Armagil?”

  “Only one.”

  “I’ve heard tell of two and they are said to be much alike in their stubbornness. According to all the gossip in the street, Dr. Blackwood and his father had a terrible falling-out and have not spoken to each other in years, the doctor even going so far as to alter his last name.”

  “But if Mr. Black knew how ill his son was, this quarrel could be mended. If you could take word to him in the morning, surely he would come.”

  “I doubt it, mistress. Tomorrow is a hanging day at Tyburn. Father Gregoire, a Jesuit priest, is going to be drawn and quartered.”

  “What sort of man is this Mr. Black?” Meg exclaimed. “His son comes this close to death and he would be unwilling to forgo his pleasure in watching a man being eviscerated?”

  “You don’t understand. There’d be no hanging or quartering if he did.” Tom fetched a deep sigh.

  “Old Gilly Black is the executioner, mistress.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  NIGHT FELL OVER LONDON BRIDGE, THE ONLY LIGHTS VISIBLE the lanterns burning in front of the houses.

  “Nine of the clock, look well to your locks, your fire, and your light,” the watchman’s voice echoed. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled, but otherwise the vast bridge was silent.

  Meg fastened the shutters closed, no longer as concerned with muting the street noise as she was with stemming the chill of night seeping through the windows.

  It was the only thing she could think of to do to help Blackwood, who had finally roused from his deep sleep. She had stoked the fire as hot as she could, piled as many blankets on him as she could find, but he shivered uncontrollably.

  Meg returned to the bedside, attempting to pack the coverlets tightly around him.

  “C-cold. So cold,” he said.

  “I know. Do you feel strong enough to stand? Perhaps I could make you a pallet and help you to lie closer to the fire.”

  “No!”

  “I should have had Tom fetch more wood before he left. I may have to go out in search—”

  “No,” he rasped again. He rolled over to look up at her. “D-don’t leave me. Climb into bed and w-warm me.”

  His eyes were dull and heavy, but he managed a semblance of a smile. “Not t-trying to seduce you. Just don’t want to be alone when—”

  “You are not going to die,” she cried, but she hastened to comply with his request, removing her shoes, stockings, frock, and petticoat with fingers that had turned wooden and clumsy.

  She stripped down to her shift and then scrambled beneath the covers to take him in her arms. He was trembling all over and his skin felt like ice. Meg pressed herself hard against him, wishing she was a larger woman, her curves more warm and generous, like Seraphine.

  She was too slight, too thin to offer him the kind of heat that he needed. She was all but crushed in his embrace, his body shaking hard enough to shatter them both.

  As she rubbed her hands vigorously over his back, Blackwood tried to speak. “M-meg. Must tell you s-something—”

  “No, save your strength. Whatever it is, it will keep until morning.”

  “D-don’t think s-so.” But his teeth chattered too hard, rendering further speech impossible.

  Meg clutched him tighter, trying to infuse him with her heat and strength. She held him until her arms throbbed with pain, until she was spent to the point of weeping from exhaustion.

  The chills wracking his frame finally stopped, allowing her to draw a ragged breath of relief. She felt his tension ease, his arms going limp and falling away from her.

  “Blackwood?” Meg struggled upright to peer down at him.

  His head fell back on the pillow, his eyes closed, his complexion as white at the sheets.

  “Armagil!” She felt for the pulse in his neck, but her fingers trembled and she couldn’t find it. She pressed her ear to his naked chest, listening for the beat of his heart. It was there, but faint, his breathing quick and shallow.

  A sob welled in Meg’s throat and she fought to suppress it. Raining hot tears on his chest would do the man no good. She had to think of something else to do. Except there wasn’t anything else. The antidote had been her only hope of defeating the poison.

  Meg caressed her hand over Blackwood’s jaw, the roughness of his beard abrading her palm. She had known him for such a short span of time and for much of that time she had believed she despised him. And now she could not bear the thought of losing him.

  She studied his face in the flickering candlelight. She had seen him drunk, angry, mocking, teasing, or lustful. Never had he looked so vulnerable, so gentle for a man who was a hangman’s son.

  Could Dr. Blackwood have chosen a profession more opposed to that of Gilly Black? Was that what had caused the rift between the two men? Meg knew that the grim trade of executioner was like many other occupations in one respect. The skills of the father were expected to be passed down to the son. What horrors Blackwood must have witnessed in his youth to cause him to defy his father.

  Meg respected Blackwood for that defiance because she knew all too well what it would have cost him. The deepest longing of any child was to revere a parent, to seek their love and approval. But when one perceived one’s father or mother as being wrong, even a monster, the pain and guilt were immense.

  “I am sorry,” she whispered. “Sorry that I did not understand, sorry if I hurt you by accusing you of being a bad doctor, but you are not an easy man to comprehend. You rarely speak seriously and you behave as though you care about nothing.”

  Except that she had seen for herself that that was not true in the way he had tried to expose Bridget Tillet’s lies about la Mère Poulet, how he had gone out of his way to make sure the old woman was safe.

  Far more than that, he had been the only one who had troubled to find out Hortense’s real name, treating her as though she was a woman who mattered and not just some mad old crone.

  Considering all that, Meg should not have been surprised by Tom’s revelations about how Blackwood ventured into the poorest quarters of the city, taking on the most desperate cases even at the risk of his own life.

  She might deplore some of his methods, the bleedings, the use of lice, but he could hardly be blamed for that. Trained in the ignorant practices that most doctors followed, Blackwood had not had the benefit of Ariane Deauville’s teaching.

  Any man wanting to be a good doctor could have learned much from the former Lady of Faire Isle. But the kind of physicians Meg had encountered would have been too arrogant to avail themselves of Ariane’s ancient knowledge, dismissing her as naught but a simple cunning woman.
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br />   Meg had even heard of some doctors who never saw their patients, merely had their symptoms described in a letter and wrote back their cures. Brewing medicine and dealing with broken bones were beneath them. The distribution of potions was the province of apothecaries, the setting of bones and stitching of cuts was left to barbers. And no physician of any standing wasted his university education upon the lower strata of society.

  That he tried to use his medical knowledge to treat the poor made Blackwood a remarkable doctor, even when he failed. As for not caring, the man cared too much to the point of drinking himself to oblivion whenever he lost a patient.

  She had discovered a great deal about Armagil Blackwood tonight, but there was so much more she needed to learn.

  Meg stroked his brow. “I wish we could begin anew. I want to know you better, but for that to happen, you have to fight this poison and stay with me, Armagil, do you hear?”

  She pressed her lips to his.

  “Please stay.”

  “TWELVE O’ CLOCK AND ALL IS WELL.”

  The watchman’s voice rang out as he made his round through the environs of Westminster.

  Midnight. The witching hour. Sir Patrick tried to suppress the thought as he avoided the watch. But as he stole away from the stairs that led up from the river landing, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He had to resist the urge to keep looking over his shoulder.

  Ever since he had had the misfortune to become entangled with those loathsome Rivers women and their mad plot to torment the king, he lived in constant dread of being followed by those witches. He remembered all too well his shock the first time they had accosted him. It had been on a foggy evening when he had been hastening home from one of his secret meetings. The two women has risen up before him like wraiths conjured up from a sorcerer’s cauldron.

  How horrified he had been to discover that they knew all about him and the conspiracy to slay the king. One of Thomas Percy’s servants had lain with Beatrice Rivers. While deep in his cups, the lackey had revealed far too much.

  “Be not alarmed, Sir Patrick,” Amy Rivers had cooed. “My sister and I would never betray your secrets. We also have our reasons for hating King James and wish to help you destroy him.”

  At first they had pretended to come from a family persecuted and ruined because of their adherence to the Catholic faith, thus forcing Amelia and Beatrice into a life of degradation in order to survive. But it had not taken long for the women to reveal their true nature.

  He did not know which of them he found to be the worst, Beatrice with her mocking eyes and cruel smile or Amelia with her syrupy voice and ridiculous efforts to be all coy and girlish.

  But he reminded himself he would soon be rid of them forever. It would all be over in less than a fortnight, everything …

  He quickened his pace, hurrying through the area the locals referred to as the Cotton Garden. Westminster Palace loomed ahead of him, the ancient walls softened by moonlight, shadows concealing the havoc time had wrought upon the red sandstone. It had been a long time since Westminster was an official royal residence, not since the days of Edward the Confessor. Much of the original structure had been destroyed by fire. What remained had become a curious jumble of parliamentary chambers and law courts rubbing shoulders with private lodgings, wine shops, taverns, and brothels.

  Patrick tipped back his head, peering up at the upper story of the palace’s left wing. Known as the Queen’s Chamber, it was where James Stuart would address the House of Lords in ten days’ time. Patrick tried to picture it as a blackened shell, stone rubble and fallen beams. Tried and failed. Such destructive imaginings held no reality. Those centuries-old walls appeared too strong, too smugly serene beneath the pale October moon.

  He lowered his gaze and made his way toward a door on the ground floor of the palace, directly beneath the Queen’s Chamber. He rapped out the prearranged signal and waited, casting a nervous look about him.

  The door creaked open a crack. He could just make out the face of Mr. Johnston, the man’s eyes a mere glint above his thick mustache and bushy beard. When he recognized Patrick, he opened the door wide enough to allow him to enter and then closed it quickly behind him.

  “Sir Patrick,” Johnston growled by way of greeting.

  “Johnston,” Patrick began, but considering the hour and the place, such pretense seemed unnecessary.

  “Mr. Fawkes,” he amended.

  Fawkes carried a lantern, but it cast a feeble glow to illuminate the vast cavelike chamber that yawned before Patrick. Thick with dust and cobwebs clinging to the wooden beams, the room appeared empty except for piles of fallen masonry and the enormous stack of firewood.

  Patrick had heard about the cellar that had been leased when the arrangements had first been made. But he had never yet seen it for himself. It was not at all the small, underground hole that he had imagined.

  “What was this place?” he asked Fawkes.

  “I believe it once served as the kitchens for the old palace.”

  It was not Fawkes who answered, but another voice that echoed off the chamber’s cavernous walls. Patrick started, glancing to his right where two men emerged from the shadows.

  One was Thomas Percy, his shock of white hair and pale face visible against the backdrop of the walls and his own dark clothing. He gave Patrick a terse nod, but the man who had spoken, Robert Catesby, stepped forward and wrung Patrick’s hand with as much warmth and ease as though they greeted each other in one of the antechambers at Whitehall.

  Catesby was a handsome man, tall and athletic. He possessed a quality that Patrick envied and was hard-pressed to define. Catesby had a kind of radiance that drew other men to him. He easily gained their trust.

  Catesby made a graceful gesture that encompassed the entire chamber. “This place has served no purpose for years, except to be leased out as a storeroom, which makes it ideal for our purposes, located as it is, directly below the old Queen’s Chamber.”

  Patrick glanced up at the wooden beams of the ceiling. It presented but a weak barrier between this chamber and where parliament would convene. But the very openness of this vast room disturbed him.

  Catesby was indisputably the leader of their group, having worked on this plot for the last two years. As a latecomer recruited only the past summer, Patrick still felt like an outsider. He had never questioned any of Catesby’s arrangements or decisions before, but now he could not help but demur.

  “I had imagined a cellar, some small room all but forgotten. Is there not a danger in employing this large store-room so readily accessible? What if someone inspects this place and notices all of that?” He pointed at the mountain of wood.

  “Unlikely. No one ever comes down here,” Catesby said.

  Fawkes added, “You can see that most of the tracks through the dirt were made by my boots. But if by chance someone did become curious to have a look at the old kitchens, what would they see? Just the firewood I have amassed to get me through the winter. My lodging is close by.”

  “It would seem a great deal of firewood for one person,” Patrick said.

  Fawkes gave a thin smile. “I am a very cold man.”

  Catesby strode over to the woodpile. He reached for one of the logs, easing it aside. Patrick moved closer to watch, but he maintained a cautious distance as did Thomas Percy, a fact that did not escape Fawkes’s notice.

  The man laughed. “You need not be so nervous, gentlemen. You’ll come to no harm as long as Catesby doesn’t conduct his inspection while holding a lighted torch.”

  Catesby eased away several of the logs, exposing the end of one crate. “So how many of these are there now?”

  “Thirty-six,” Fawkes said.

  When Catesby started to pry off the lid, Fawkes protested, “There is no need for that. I have kept careful watch over the powder, tested it frequently to make sure it does not become decayed.”

  “Decayed?” Patrick asked.

  “Aye, when gunpowder sits for too lo
ng, it breaks down into its various parts of ammonium and sulfate. It becomes utterly worthless. That is what happened to the first supply we laid in over a year ago. Replacing it was a costly and risky business. That is why we cannot afford another delay, so I hope you have done your part, Sir Patrick.”

  Before Sir Patrick could answer, Thomas Percy spoke up for him. “He has. The king’s fears have been allayed by that cunning woman Sir Patrick fetched from France. She convinced the king the curse has been lifted, although I cannot fathom how. We all know what a poor opinion of women the king has and Mistress Wolfe did not look like anything out of the ordinary.”

  Didn’t she? From the moment Patrick had first seen Meg, he had sensed something different about her, something fey that had disconcerted him. He marveled at Percy’s inability to see it.

  Fawkes regarded him curiously. “So how did she convince the king? What magic did she employ?”

  “None.” But Patrick shifted uneasily as he recalled the way Meg had stared into the king’s eyes as though she not only had the ability to read James’s mind, but could influence his thoughts as well. Patrick would have been ashamed to admit it to a hardened soldier like Fawkes, but he had become afraid of Meg, so terrified of her strange power, he was leery of returning to his own home.

  “She appeared to simply hold the king’s hands and pray over him.”

  “She prayed over him?” Percy marveled. “Odd sort of behavior for a witch.”

  “It little matters how she did it,” Catesby said. “The important thing is that the king will not delay the opening of parliament again.”

  Fawkes looked skeptical. “Aye, unless those witches do something further to torment him.”

  “They won’t. They want to see James punished as much as we do, but they will cease their mischief. I shall see to it,” Sir Patrick said.

  Catesby appeared satisfied. He turned back to his inspection of the crates. “You are sure we have accrued enough powder?” he asked Fawkes.

  “Enough to blast away the chamber above us and every man in it.”