The Tudor Vendetta

by C. W. Gortner

  The wherry men were experienced, using their wide oars to maneuver past the whirlpools in the wake of the Bridge. Bile soured my mouth as I looked around at the stone span resting like a calcified dragon across the river with its cluster of painted buildings and massive opposing gates, their tops spiked with poles bearing the tar-boiled heads of traitors.

  What had the letter in the box revealed? Whatever it was, I could have no doubt that I was in serious peril—called a traitor and sent to the Tower.

  Royal blood, indeed.

  Suddenly, I felt a sick drop in the pit of my stomach. It seemed impossible. Who could have known? Cecil knew about me, of course; he had known about the royal blood in my veins long before I did but he would never have confessed it after all this time, lest it roused Elizabeth’s fury that he had kept it from her and he too ended up imprisoned. No, Cecil would not have dared. Who else? Think, I told myself, as panic engulfed me. Who else?

  I froze. I had told Queen Mary. During my last assignation at court, I had gone to her in desperation as she was about to send Elizabeth to her death, to protect the princess and prove my loyalty, citing that the same blood bound all three of us, my mother having been their father’s younger sister, after whom Mary herself was named. My revelation had stopped the queen from ordering Elizabeth’s execution, if not her imprisonment, but she must have confided my secret to someone else. I dreaded to think it but that someone could be no other than the man who had been at Mary’s side since the start of her reign, whispering venom in her ear: the Imperial ambassador, Renard. It explained why he had come after me once Mary ordered me from court, forcing me to flee abroad. I had never known how he knew where to find me, but now it seemed all too clear. Mary had told him of the threat I posed as a possible rival claimant to the throne, and he had decided to put an end to me. Who had he told in turn? He must have sent trusted agents, but had he gone so far as to inform them about me? Could Godwin be one of his agents? Had he enclosed the letter in the poisoned box, his abduction of Lady Parry a lure to bait my trap?

  Yes, that had to be it. Nothing else made any sense. I had not been imagining it; the sin he wished to avenge was my own: the sin of my birth. With me in the Tower under suspicion of treason, Godwin could proceed to destroy Elizabeth with impunity, using her son as a pawn.

  Though terror smothered my very breath, I forced my words out. “My lord, you must heed me. I tell you, the queen is in grave danger.”

  Dudley glanced over his shoulder at me from under the shadow of his velvet cap. “I hear only a corpse talking,” he said. He turned away, directing the boatmen to bring our vessel into the wide pool lapping at the steps of the water gate. The Tower rose above us, hemmed by its weathered walls, the formidable White Keep looming up from within its center.

  The guards secured the barge to the quay; Dudley disembarked and stood watching as the guards started to lift me out, one hand on his hip, snow powdering his broad cloaked shoulders. I shook the guards away, traversing on numb legs the flight of slimed steps and the cloistered passageway leading into the cobblestone courtyard at the heart of the Tower.

  The last time I had been here, stalls had festooned this courtyard, vendors allowed inside during the day to sell food and other goods to those who oversaw the administration. There had been an old scaffold, as well; I now darted my gaze to where I remembered seeing it, situated a short walk from the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. Many of those who had died here, including Elizabeth’s mother, lay entombed before the altar.

  The scaffold was gone, the courtyard offering only a view of the sky and no reprieve, devoid of stalls. I was marched to the Beauchamp Tower; as I suddenly recognized the macabre irony of it, I started to struggle until Dudley said, “You should best not fight. She might yet show mercy if you show some dignity. You might get the axe rather than the rope and cleaver, though you hardly deserve it. Besides,” he added coldly, “you should be grateful to share the very rooms I once had with my brothers under Queen Mary. Were it up to me, you’d be thrown into the Little Ease with the rats, but she insists you must reside here until she decides your fate.”

  The room was as I recalled it. More like the inside of an impoverished manor than a cell in the realm’s most forbidding fortress, it was vaulted and airy, or as airy as any room in the Tower could be, with musty tapestries on the whitewashed walls, a recessed hearth, and mullioned embrasure offering a circumscribed view of the execution area beyond.

  My heels struck echoes on the plank floor. Dudley ordered the guards to release me. After they retreated outside the door, he said, “I believe we left some of our books in the bedchamber, though of course they are not very useful when it comes to reading. As you know, we cut out most of the pages while imprisoned to convey our letters, but feel free to peruse at will. It is not as if you’ve much else to do.”

  He turned heel to depart. Without raising my voice, I told him, “Whatever you think I have done, you will condemn her to certain death if I am not allowed to speak to her.”

  He stiffened. “You are a liar. You have always been a liar. My family should have strangled you for the whelp you are, and spared us the misfortunes you have wrought. You should never have been allowed to live as long as you have.”

  I did not move. “Tell her he is alive and at Hatfield.”

  “Who is alive?” he spat. After years of dueling with me, he now believed he had secured my defeat and he sneered as I reached into my cloak. Though the guards had removed my belt with my poniard and sword, I had not otherwise been searched, an oversight in Dudley’s gleeful exercise of power. Removing the ring from its bag, I extended it to him. “Show this to her.”

  Dudley stared at the ring in my palm. If I had not known better, I would have thought he recognized it. Then he let out a cruel laugh. “Is this all you can think of to save your flea-ridden hide, another of your base tricks? I think not. She is no longer prey to your wiles.”

  “Then you have no reason not to let her judge for herself. If she finds you kept this from her, she will have executed an innocent man who did only as she bade.”

  I waited, knowing that if he left without taking the ring I would never leave this place alive. Then, to my overwhelming relief, he snatched the ring from me and strode out.

  My legs gave way. I crumpled to my knees.

  I had entrusted my only hope to my worst foe.

  LONDON

  Chapter Twenty

  I spent the night curled up on the bed without sheets or coverlet, wrapped in my cloak, listening to the grumbling of the Tower at night: the occasional roar of the aging, wild beasts caged in the menagerie; the tromping of the night watch below the window; and the deafening, dread-filled silence in between.

  When dawn’s light leaked through the panes, footsteps came at my door and a sullen guard delivered a meal. I regarded the trencher in disgust: moldering bread and a bowl of watery gruel I would not have tossed to a beggar on the street. A flare of irritation caused me to growl, “You call this sustenance? I demand fresh water. Or am I to satiate my thirst with my own piss?”

  The guard, one of the many menials who greased the Tower’s inner workings, looked taken aback by this display of defiance by a royal prisoner. “I’m not permitted to—” he started to mumble, but I waved him out, furious, overturning the trencher and taking childish satisfaction in the splatter of gruel against the wall.

  My fury ebbed as quickly as it had flared. Pacing to the embrasure, I pressed my face against the icy glass. I was trembling. The snow had stopped, leaving melting piles about the courtyard, indented with sodden footprints. As I watched guards and others engaged in the Tower’s business come and go, I wondered how long they would keep me here before they led me to my death. I had devoted my life to seeing Elizabeth safe, even when she had trodden a fine line between righteousness and treason herself. I had never questioned her motives—

  A sudden gasp curdled my throat.

  Elizabeth. She now knew the truth. She knew everyt
hing and she wanted me dead. I turned about, the opaque mystery shedding its final layers. The child she had borne and hidden, Lady Parry’s disappearance—it was all Elizabeth’s doing, because now she was queen and under no circumstances could she allow Raff to endanger her. Had she seized advantage of a terrifying situation to ensure her secret would remain unknown? Had I unwittingly walked into the very snare she had prepared, unaware that another agent, a Spanish agent, also stalked me? If so, if the letter in the poisoned box had indeed betrayed my secret, then like Mary before her, Elizabeth would now see me as a rival, a bastard but still a man, with Tudor blood in his veins.

  She would never let me live.

  She never tells the entire truth if she can avoid it, and what she does not say often ends up costing someone their life.

  God help me, Kate had warned me. Elizabeth was a survivor. She had outlived numerous attempts on her life—tenacious and unrelenting, she had finally gained her throne after years of peril. I had no doubt she would see me dead to protect it.

  I rushed to the door then, banging my fists against it, bloodying my knuckles as I shouted myself hoarse for the guard. My fear for Shelton, whom I had sent to Hatfield, and for Raff, too, who did not know who he was, overcame me. When the guard did not come, I reeled from the door to prowl the chamber, desperate now that I had finally uncovered the truth.

  After hours of pacing like the caged lions above the Tower gatehouse, I exhausted myself. As dusk once again swallowed the light I fell onto the bed, trying to find some measure of reassurance in the fact that Elizabeth had not ordered me killed outright, grasping onto the faint hope that Cecil might yet intervene. Though I had left court without word, betraying his trust, he valued me enough to instill caution in her.

  She might keep me alive. For now.

  When the jangle of keys came at the door, turning the lock, I sprang to my feet, edging from the chamber with nothing but my fists to defend me. A cloaked figure appeared, removing her hood to let it crumple about her shoulders as she looked about the room in disbelief.

  “Kate!” I had not reached her before she stepped aside and another figure entered, fully hooded and cloaked in black velvet.

  Lifting a slim white hand to pull back her hood, Elizabeth revealed her icy countenance.

  The moment extended between us, fraught with the memories of our past adventures, with my suspicion of the falsehood I now believed her capable of. She was visibly gaunt, cheekbones incised under her skin. I had been right that she did not rest easy. Already her burden had begun to age her before her time.

  “Leave us,” she said. Kate retreated from the room. I was alone with the queen and a past we had both tried to conceal.

  She did not hesitate. “Is it true?” she asked. “Are you who the letter claims you are?” She did not offer the letter in question and I debated for a moment if I should disabuse her of any notion that we shared the same blood. She had nothing to prove it, as it appeared Cecil had not told her what he knew. But, even as I considered it, I knew the time for lies was past. I would go to my death with the truth on my lips.

  “I am.” I drew the unlaced edges of my shirt about my throat, feeling vulnerable before her in my sagging breeches and soiled hose, stripped of finery and pretense.

  “Why did you not tell me?” She took a single step forward. “Why did you leave it to be discovered thus, in a letter concealed in a box of death intended for me?”

  “Would you have believed me?” My question detained her advance. “I saw no reason to tell you. It made no difference. I would have served you, regardless. I have never wanted anything more.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” she said, “given who you are.”

  “Believe what you will, my lady. What right can I possibly claim?”

  “But you—you are my aunt Mary of Suffolk’s son! You might have been…” Her incredulity faded into the unseen chasm between us. “You should never have kept it from me,” she said fiercely. “I gave you refuge. You had my trust yet you thought it wise to tell my own sister, who sought my death, while leaving me in ignorance. Did you not think I deserved to know?”

  “Yes,” I said softly. “I did. It seems we both hid secrets we should never have kept.”

  Her mouth pursed. Then she swept past me, her cloak parting over her plain black gown as she gazed out of the embrasure. “When Mary put me in here,” she said, “I thought I would die like my mother. I even made plans to summon the swordsman from Calais. And when I was freed, I vowed to never set foot in the Tower again.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Yet it seems I must lodge here for my coronation. It is the custom, I am told.” She paused. “If there is to be a coronation. As matters stand, nothing is certain anymore.”

  I did not answer, remaining quiet as she composed herself, looking out toward the very site where her mother had perished. Her sigh was subtle, less an exhalation of surrender than one of forthcoming courage for the battle ahead. “What do you want of me?”

  Her words took me aback. When I failed to respond, she turned to face me. “Well? That letter was in a cipher devised only for Lady Parry and me. No one else knew of it, yet somehow you discovered it. And you sent Robert to me with the ring. You must want something. Otherwise, why go through the expense of such an elaborate ruse?”

  “You—you think I am responsible for all this?” I suddenly wanted to burst out laughing at the absurdity of it, when only hours before I had suspected the same of her. Then I saw her face tighten and I added, “I am no traitor. You must know that. Whatever else that letter claims, I never sought your ruin. The last thing I ever wanted is to be who I am.”

  Her struggle to accept my declaration brought a deep crease to her brow. For her, being who she was superseded everything; she had been born to her destiny, believed in it with fervent single-mindedness. She must have found it nearly impossible to concede that I did not envy or desire it, even though she had now begun to recognize the immense weight it entailed.

  “I did what was necessary to keep your sister from killing you,” I went on. “I had no choice; she had to know I was more than an intelligencer, that I had personal cause to serve both her and you. The only part I have in any of this is the ring. The boy gave it to me—”

  She moved forward so swiftly, she cut off my voice. “Where is he? I will give you whatever you want—a title and castle, enough money to go abroad and live safely. I will see to it personally. You have my word. You can have anything if you only tell me where he is.”

  Her anguish overpowered her; as I marked the fear she fought against with all her strength, I said quietly, “I told Lord Robert. He is at Hatfield, with the man I believe to be my father.”

  “Liar!” Her hand flashed out, striking me across my cheek. “Where is my son?”

  As I stood there, the sting of her palm on my skin, I whispered, “I do not know.”

  “You … you do not know?” she echoed, incredulous. “Did you not see him at Vaughan Hall? Did you not just confess you had him taken from there? If you do not know, who does?”

  “He is … he is not there?” My dismay must have shown on my face, for Elizabeth reeled back, her hand at her mouth. “He—he is not,” she whispered, her voice fraying. “I sent a messenger to Hatfield as soon as Robert brought me the ring. Ashley returned word that no one had arrived there. It is the only reason you are not dead. Dear God in Heaven, if he is not at Hatfield where you sent him, where is he? He is an innocent. I only ever wanted to keep him safe! Who has my son?”

  In that moment, the briars of deception became terrifyingly clear.

  I moved quickly to her. “Elizabeth, you must heed me. If I am to save him, you have to trust that as I would give my life for you, so will I do so for him. This man who has him, who planned all of this—I am the only one who can stop him.”

  “Man? What man?”

  “I do not know him,” I said. “I know only his name: Simon Godwin. He served as tutor in the Vaughan household, but he is far more
than they suspected. I think—no, I believe—that he is a hireling of Simon Renard’s, the Imperial ambassador at your sister’s court. Renard discovered the truth about me; your sister must have told him. This gambit Godwin plays is about me, too; he seeks to destroy us both.”

  “But Renard is gone,” she said. “After my sister died, he was recalled to Spain.”

  “He still could have instructed this man to stay behind to serve as his hound. Renard hunted me when you were under arrest. If your sister confided the truth about me, he would have wanted me dead. Mary was gravely ill; Renard must have feared that as her life weakened, I could emerge as a rival. He could not allow it. He wanted you, and you alone, to inherit the throne. It is part of the gambit.” I added grimly, “The vendetta.”

  “Vendetta? You believe a Spanish agent took Hugh to destroy me?” She uttered her son’s real name, the one she had given him, and I ached to hear her despair. “But, why? How did he even know that Hugh existed?”

  “He knew because of where you placed the boy,” I said, thinking back on the pieces of the mystery that until now I had not fitted into place. “Lady Vaughan’s family are papists, survivors of the Pilgrimage of Grace. They were acquainted with members of your sister’s court; and Renard knew them. He serves Spain. King Philip may have saved you before—but not to safeguard you. No, he has only ever wanted you in his debt. You told me he does not dare openly challenge you. That day we found the letter in the box, you said he feared the French more because should something befall you, France would champion Mary of Scots in your stead. Has he offered yet to marry you?”

  She did not move, did not speak, but as I watched, I saw a tremor pass across her face.