Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (5 page)

"Hear me well, girl," Chiffinch's voice said near her ear. "If you vow to be silent, I will remove the bag from your head and the bindings. I wager I can trust your vow. If I cannot, you're a dead woman."

Meriel took a deep breath and nodded. She would promise the devil his dinner to be able to see where she was being taken, and perhaps a means of escape.

Her eyes were uncovered, and Chiffmch pulled out the gag. Her mouth was too dry to spit at him, though she was able to loose one word: "Villain!" Before she delved further into her store of vile words learned from the many seamen who'd visited her master the Admiral, she struggled to pull away her arm, which he held all the tighter, though his sober face broke into a grin. The bastard enjoyed the struggle.

Meriel had never been so furious. Chiffinch must be high in the king's favor, if he thought he could kidnap any woman he fancied. And him twice or better her years. She rounded on him, though chilled in her shift. "You foul goat! Do you think that you can abduct me from Sir Edward and use me as you will? Are you so poor for women that you must drag unwilling maids to the Tower!" Her voice gathered sarcasm with every breath. "Or are you up to some magic, pretending that I'm the real countess to give your failing cock new life!"

Chiffinch was no longer smiling. "You are here on His Majesty's business, so say more of insult to the king's chief servant at your peril." He pushed her faster up the hill toward the green, which had been watered with the blood of traitors who had defied a king's will.

With great effort, Meriel kept her tongue in her head, determined to retain both until she could get away, for she would get away from this evil condition, if only to death. Although she preferred something more pleasant and less permanent.

They bent to enter at a low doorway and she was led past barred cells, some holding men in chains, who looked up hopefully and then sank back into their stinking straw. She heard groans and imagined, swallowing hard, that she smelled the acrid odor of blood over the other all-too-human odors. She was pushed round a corner and up narrow tower steps, circling past a series of landings with doors. She fought down waves of terror when again she heard the moans of men and a woman's cry. Or was it her too-vivid imagination? All her life she had heard stories of the bloody Tower; none of them she wanted to recall in detail at this moment or even the next.

Dizzy from climbing, Meriel put out a hand and touched the scream-soaked stones, ancient and cold, then quickly withdrew her fingers, wiping them against her shift.

Finally, Chiffinch opened a door at the very top and pushed her over the lintel.

Meriel was amazed that there was a cheerily glowing fireplace and food steaming upon a trestle table before it. An older woman of a good thirty years was rising from a pallet against the wall to curtsy to her.
To her?

Meriel faced the spymaster. "If you don't intend to use me for your private pleasures, what do you intend? You must tell my master where I am, for he will look—"

"You have a confident air for one born so low," Chiffinch said, his eyelids drooping but nonetheless seeing everything.

"I begin to think me that I have not been mistaken in my plan."

Before Meriel could scream,
What plan!
the heavy oaken door slammed shut. She quickly tried it, even as the huge lock clicked.

Furious, she stomped to the window to jump, or to yell rape, but she saw that she was very much too high for the one and too without any rescuers for the other. '"Od's wrath!" she yelled, whirling on the other woman, who curtsied again. "Who are you, and what—"

"My pardon, your ladyship, won't you please sit and break your fast. I have here some warm ale, cakes and haunch of good English beef."

The woman's eyes were lowered as Mend's mouth dropped open in amazement. "Why do you call me that?"

"Call you what, your ladyship?"

"Your ladyship!"

"Is that not the correct address for the Countess of Warborough?"

The sun was setting through the stone mullioned window when two Tower yeoman guards came for her. She had paced miles back and forth in the room, but had also eaten well, sensibly deciding that she could not escape if weakened by starvation. And the odor of fresh bread, still warm, was irresistible, as it had always been. Orphans learn early that food is never to be rejected for reasons of temper. Or any reason.

The maid, who said her name was Agnes, although Meriel could pry little else from the sly wench, had helped her into a dress that Meriel recognized immediately. It was heavy lilac velvet trimmed in large gray pearls, and as she put it on Meriel could smell the lavender scent of its former owner. It was indeed the same gown worn by Lady Felice the night before as she danced the sarabande with her husband, Lord Giles Harringdon.

An image of the tall earl, moving stiffly with his partner in a body that seemed made for grace and lithe movement, came at once to her mind. Or perhaps had never left it as the features she'd adored for so long were never far from her thoughts.
Hey, well, I always try to be honest with myself, or what is the purpose of a mind?

But how came the dress to be here in the Tower and not on Felice? And why should Agnes playact that Meriel was the Countess Felice?

Meriel sneezed violently, and Agnes rushed to provide a handkerchief. "The lavender," Meriel said, her eyes tearing. "Such flower scents do make it happen."

"Then I wonder that your ladyship loves this scent above all others," Agnes said in perfect seriousness. Too perfect.

Meriel nodded. So Agnes was part of the game, whatever it was. Well, Meriel would play it out, until she could escape back to ... where? In the palace she would be mistaken for Lady Felice again and again. In the city, she had no money.

She sneezed mightily and walked quickly to the window, leaning between the bars for fresh air, but she had not long to breathe it. The door lock clicked and two Tower guards with wicked-looking double-bladed pikes appeared, one standing aside for her to proceed him.

"I will wait here for your ladyship," Agnes said with a low curtsy.

"Very well," Meriel said, her head high, since she knew right well what angle highborn ladies held their chins.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked the guard, wondering why she was so richly dressed if she were to be placed in a dungeon, raped, racked or even executed.
Are these the sporting games of idle lords and spymasters? And perhaps especially for this spymaster, who might enjoy dressing me as a noblewoman who is unattainable to him?
There was no gag in her mouth now, and she would call Chiffinch what she had not been able to call him aloud before. She practiced the oaths silently as she descended, rolling them about on her tongue with some little satisfaction.

They wound down the stone steps and along an echoing hall, out across the green sward, Sirius the Dog Star already faintly visible in the evening sky. They entered the side door of a chapel. Meriel lifted her head and squared her shoulders as she stepped into the candlelit, rich tapestry-hung room. If they wanted to play at her being a countess, then she would be a...

She dropped to her knees, half from fright, half from duty.

There was no mistaking the straight, dark figure standing before her. Though his suit was unadorned, it was of a very rich tabby cloth with crested buttons of polished silver; his great hat sat firmly on his long black curling wig. Even had she not seen him on his throne in his glittering Presence Chamber, she would know him from the face on the coins she took to market each week.

King Charles II advanced a step and held out his beringed hand, a slight smile spreading his lips and lifting his mustache. Meriel didn't know whether she was supposed to kiss the hand or take it, so she used her energy to keep herself from shrinking away. The king bent and lifted her by her elbow.

"Don't be afraid of us," he said in a pleasant, light voice. "Yes, Chiffinch, the likeness is quite remarkable. Speak, girl, let us hear you."

Meriel stifled a sneeze, trying to remember the elegant tone she had practiced often enough since a girl. "Your Majesty, I dare only say that my heart o'erflows to greet your most sacred person at last."

The king laughed, and she could see that he found her answer most enjoyable. "Well spoken, lass." The king turned to Chiffinch. "Her voice is far more resonant and pitched lower than Lady Felice's, but since that lady brays like an ass e'en when not using hers"—the king smiled broadly at his shocking turn of phrase—"it is vastly more pleasing to our ears."

Chiffinch bowed, smiling widely.
A king never smiles alone,
Meriel thought, storing the knowledge, as she did all things newly observed.

The king stepped away, speaking to the spymaster, who followed. "The earl is no fool and neither are the Dutch. It will take more, we think, than a face and courage, which you do assure us this lass has in abundance. Where is her carriage? Her manner? Her knowledge of our court? Even for you, William, this may be too great a task to accomplish in so short a time."

Chiffinch bowed, his hand on his heart. "In one week, Your Majesty, this girl will be Lady Felice, only better for our purposes. She has a brain and is very quick, I vow, which is more than I can say for the countess, who was caught spying for the Dutch because her arrogance made her stupidly careless."

"Where do you keep her now?"

"Secure in the Bowyer Tower, Your Majesty."

"Secure, indeed, William, since those ancient walls have held many traitors. But we have yet to hear how you exposed her."

"Lady Felice was observed entering a glover's shop of known Dutch sympathies. My agents later followed her and stopped her carriage on the Norfolk road late last night. She had coded messages on her person. The admiralty will soon decipher them, although the code is a strange one." He bowed again.

"Then we place our realm in your hands and in the hands of our beautiful new countess, William." The king smiled again; indeed the smile indicated a long-practiced secret amusement at all schemers.

Ah,
Meriel thought, storing away another bit of knowledge,
he is not ruled by others as so many in the palace and the commons think.

The king stepped near to Meriel, and looked hard at her from his great height. "Are you willing to do your king and England a great service to the risk of your very life, m'lady?"

Hey, well, what can I do but nod with some enthusiasm?
How could she find other words in the chaos that was her brain, pleasing voice instead of a braying ass, or no?

Then true words came to her. "Your Majesty, I can hardly do less than m'lord Giles and show him the honor all England owes its heroes."

The king didn't hide his pleasure at her answer. "Ah, excellently spoken again!" The king looked to Chiffinch, who bowed. "Continue with our new Lady Felice and give us news of her progress and your plans as they unfold."

The yeoman guards marched Meriel out, but not before she heard one final command from the king. "And William, see what you can discover about this young maiden's parentage. We think this remarkable likeness and delicacy of feature are only possible with a noble family connection, perhaps Lady Felice's own. Wasn't there some scandal..."

Crossing the Tower green, Meriel lost the rest of the king's words, nor did she hear the lions' roar or the elephant's trumpet. She allowed her gown to brush the wet grass, while her fingers explored her face. For a moment, her mind raced with a question. She was certainly in a tower, so why couldn't she be a princess? Then she laughed aloud, to the amazement of the yeoman guards tramping beside her.

Meriel's training began the next day with a formal dinner laid before her, including ivory-handled silver forks from Italy, now all the mode.

"Your ladyship," Agnes prompted twice when Meriel forgot, "meat is no longer speared with the knife at Whitehall, but forked into the mouth in small pieces."

Later, through a secret spy hole, Meriel observed Chiffinch closely as he endlessly questioned the real Lady Felice about her Dutch contacts, under threat of the headsman's ax if she did not cooperate. Meriel thought that the lady probably lied as often as she told the truth. And Felice most certainly lied when she tried to implicate Lord Giles in her spying schemes. It was obvious to anyone of any discernment that Felice was determined to destroy her husband, if not with her many lovers then with her false charges. It was said, and she happily repeated, that she led the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Rochester around by their cods, and had even bedded James, Duke of York, His Majesty's brother and head of the fleet.

Meriel was amazed as the intricate tale of spying unfolded at the spymaster's masterful questioning, a mix of promises and threats. Felice had access not only to the Duke's person, but also to his plans to resupply the fleet and to the number and location of English vessels and garrisons guarding the Thames. She even had information about the number of cannonballs stored in the river forts, especially Sheerness, which was the first line of the Thames defenses. It seemed James had left naval plans on a table near his bed. When Felice had swived him to exhaustion and deep sleep, she had learned all the Dutch needed and put it into cipher.

Everything Meriel heard at the spy hole caused her to question what Chiffinch had in store for her. He didn't trust her with more information than for her immediate needs, preferring to tell her only what she must do next.

That night she confronted Agnes. "I must know what I face, or how can I be prepared? Chiffinch trusts no one, probably not even you."

Agnes looked about their tower room, frightened. "Nay, I can tell you nothing."

"Who would hear?"

Meriel watched as Agnes went to the oaken door and ran her fingers over every inch of it. "What are you doing?"

"I checked this the first day, m'lady, but a hole could have been bored since. Whitehall itself is full of spy holes, especially into a lady's bedchamber." She returned to the table where Meriel sat. "I know little more than you do, m'lady."