Maid of Secrets (17 page)

“So two violent acts bracketing many small slights,” I said. “It’s been more than a month since the vestments were burned. I fear our villain may strike again.”

“Why now?” Jane asked. “Last week’s ball would have been the best opportunity for him. A revel, the castle overflowing with guests and courtiers.” She shrugged. “Perhaps it is all mere coincidence.”

“Enough!” The fight master’s command drew us up short, and we were instantly on our feet, back in ready position. But Cecil had left, and Beatrice was delicately picking straw out of her hair, while flirting with the guards. Our session was at an end. “You’re to attend the Queen in the Privy Garden,” the fight master announced. He nodded to the guards, who were paid handsomely for both their silence and their aid in this particular set of studies. “Clean yourselves up and begone with you.”

We curtsied dutifully, then hurried out of the stable area into the adjoining privy, which had been substantially improved since we’d first begun our lessons. In addition to the close stool in the corner, which harbored a chamber pot that was now faithfully changed after every use, there was a series of water jugs and basins lining one wall. We took turns pouring water to clean our faces and arms and changing out of our practice kirtles and bodices, lacing up our finer gowns with speed born of long practice. We helped one another, despite any small annoyances among us. The object was speed and thoroughness, and we were judged on this as much as everything else.

Less than a quarter hour later, we were all in the Privy Garden, keeping pace as the Queen took her walk. After the flurry of the practice session, it was a welcome respite to be asked to do nothing but wander along aimlessly. Excitement
flowed through the air around us. The Queen, her closest ladies, and her nonspying maids had just returned from London, where she’d spent the last several days since the ball, entertaining the Bishop de Quadra, the stout new ambassador from Spain. Today was the first time all of her ordinary attendants and we maids a-spying were together in this private sanctuary since I’d received my initial orders.

And how private was it, really?
I glanced around. There were dozens of women here; that made for scant solitude. We rounded the next bend in the garden path, and my thoughts strayed inexorably to Cecil’s heinous assignment. Where could the Queen have true privacy in the castle, if only for the briefest of times? Her chamber would seem a natural location for privacy, of course, except the Queen slept with a half dozen ladies in attendance just beyond her bed’s ornate canopy. This garden was a lovely oasis, but still—out of doors, and open to prying eyes. She seemed to favor Saint George’s Hall, of course . . . .

That tripped my memory. The large, drafty Saint George’s Hall was a wreck and a ruin, built more than a hundred years earlier and never updated. But more than once the Queen had tasked me to find a dropped bauble or bracelet in that unwelcome space and return the item to her in secrecy. She’d planted other trinkets around the castle, in other places, but none so frequently as in Saint George’s Hall. I’d assumed it was a silly test. But instead did she venture there to be alone? Was that her own secret hideaway, to escape her royal obligations? As if I were running lines for the Golden Rose, another couplet began dancing through my mind:
To slip away a-wandering without the world a-wondering . . .

Perhaps there was not so much freedom in the Queen’s world as I was determined to believe. The thought made me curiously sad.
A chain too tight for sundering, her royal gilded cage.

We turned again, a river of muted colors flowing down another cobbled walkway. The Queen was well ahead, the deep emerald of her gown startling in the morning light. The rest of us followed en masse, both ladies and maids, like an extended train. I gazed over the women, taking in details with rote practice. A smile, a cocked head, a whisper. Hands fluttering or at rest, skirts swishing in hypnotic measure.

And then I saw it.

“What is it?” Jane instantly tensed, still attuned to me after following me so closely in our staged combat session. “What just happened?”

It had been only a flash. A hand gloved in milk-white satin secreting a folded square of parchment from her dress, then pressing it into the slim fingers of an ungloved hand, just at the turn of the cobbled walkway. The bare hand slipping the package into her waistband. Fingers both covered and bare now smoothed down skirts, and no one but me had seen the subtle movement. It had happened so quickly, but I’d just seen one of Rafe’s letters get passed from hand to hand, I was sure of it. I grinned, triumphant.
Got you.

“A moment,” I murmured, memorizing every detail as we continued our sedate progress. The woman who’d taken the letter was a lithe figure in a soft green gown, a gown whose subdued shade perfectly offset an ornately styled pouf of white-blond hair.
Hello, Lady Amelia.
If I’d not been looking exactly where I had, I might have missed the exchange entirely. But then, that was my role here.
To watch—and to steal. And, apparently, to catch other light-fingered ladies.

Lady Amelia . . . she had been friendly enough with the Spaniards, but her family was old and well respected. Was this just an innocent transfer? And who was the other woman, who’d given the letters to Lady Amelia? I’d seen only her hand. Gloves were not much favored among the younger women of the court, at least not in high summer. I frowned, my eyes darting from hand to hand. Only the ladies of the bedchamber wore any gloves at all.

Could that be right? Those august ladies had been parted from us since the ball, but . . . a traitor in the Queen’s own bedchamber? Among her closest friends?

“What is it?” Jane prodded me again. “You’ve seen something.”

I nodded, still trying to puzzle it out. “I think I just found one of the letters Rafe gave to Count de Feria,” I said.

Jane glanced at me sharply, a grin spreading over her face. “From courtier to ambassador to English lady? That’s a crooked path. Which one?”

“Lady Amelia has it now. I couldn’t quite see who gave it to her.”

“Makes you wonder what’s in these letters,” Jane said.

“And who they’re really from,” I muttered. Was it the pope or the king of Spain? Or someone else entirely? And what did Rafe have to do with them?

“Shall we see for ourselves? Tonight?”

I felt excitement stir within me, and not just because the chase was on. In that statement, Jane and I had become
partners, if only in so small a task as nicking a note out of a lady’s chamber.

Perhaps the castle would not be so bad a place after all, with adventures such as this.

“Tonight,” I agreed.

We turned the corner to take another lap around the fragrant space, and were startled by a page waiting at the doorway to the garden. His eyes lit up when he saw me.

“Miss Margaret Fellowes,” he said in that too thin, too-high voice that plagued some boys who’d not yet reached their manhood. “I present you with a summons from Sir William Cecil.”

He proffered a salver bearing an ornate card. With my name on it.

My eyes flew open wide, and I looked from him to Jane, then back down again. My hesitation must have seemed odd, because the boy’s hand began to tremble.

But I knew that salver, and what it meant. I’d not been taking classes in court etiquette for more than three months now for no reason, after all. I just couldn’t believe it was meant . . . for me.

“Take it!” Jane hissed, and I reached out for the card. The boy tucked the salver under his arm, pivoting to escort me.

I turned the card over, and the words swam together. Jane was at my side, pressing close to translate, but I did not need her to read the card for me. My reading skills had progressed well enough for this.

Cecil was summoning me to his office chambers. To discuss a betrothal.

My betrothal, specifically.

I looked at Jane. She blinked at me. Then a wry smile creased her lips.

“Beatrice will lose her mind,” she said.

I stared back down at the card. “She’s not the only one.”

I don’t know how I even made it through the castle, stumbling blindly after the page. What had I done to merit this terrible turn of events? Why was I being punished? Had I not acted promptly enough in finding the source of the castle disruptions?

And who was being considered as my husband?

I barely glanced up as I passed into the Queen’s receiving room. Normally this space was reserved for visiting ambassadors as they waited to present their suits to the Queen. Of late it seemed like a second Spanish stateroom, filled to bursting with the newly arrived members of the Spanish delegation and their hangers-on.

I’d tried to avoid this area of the castle since the ball, because it only served to remind me of Cecil’s terrible orders to spy on the Queen. But I knew my way to the advisor’s official chambers by heart nonetheless. It was a simple room meant to impress upon everyone that the Queen’s advisor was but a lowly servant to Her Majesty. Cecil had a certain reverse conceit in this fashion. He was powerful, yet strove to appear humble. It was the kind of falseness that seemed to assuage his piety.

The room was boisterous and relaxed, proclaiming the camaraderie of men confident in their positions. Rafe was in the midst of a laughing group of courtiers, each more handsome than the last. I had a vague sense of capes and long silk-clad legs, and brightly colored embroidered doublets over short, paneled slops. Every one of the Spaniards wore a long, slender—and unsharpened—rapier, all part of the show, but at this moment the men were little more than a blur to me. I felt Rafe’s eyes upon me even as I trained my gaze forward, but I couldn’t look at him. I suddenly wished for Beatrice at my side. She would have provided an ample diversion, and left me free to gain my audience with Cecil.

I’d barely made it halfway through the room, when Rafe stepped into my path.

“An unexpected pleasure,” he said, reaching for my hand and bowing over it, the perfect gentleman. His touch still sent a thrill through my fingers, and I pulled my hand away just a bit too quickly. The page stopped in front of us, clearly annoyed at being forced to wait.

“What brings you to our quarters this afternoon, sweet Meg?” Rafe asked.

I clutched the card in my hand reflexively, but swallowed. I could not say that Cecil had summoned me, for no reason at all. Why would the Queen’s advisor have need of a maid? Unless it was to discuss her betrothal? A horrifying thought struck me. What if my
intended
was standing in the room beyond? How had it all come to this?

Rafe’s eyes dropped to my hand with its damning contents, then darted to the servant, taking in the page’s salver. His gaze came up to mine with a snap, his eyes intent.

“Are there congratulations in order, fair maid? If so, you don’t look entirely happy.”

I smiled at him sweetly, my own eyes widening in a worthy approximation of girlish glee. “ ’Tis the most amazing surprise, my lord, and I am the luckiest of girls.”

If anything he looked even more shocked. “In truth?” he spluttered. “Is this what I think it—”

“Miss Fellowes?”

I started, and it was Walsingham, not Cecil, who was smiling at me from Cecil’s chamber, that same odd half smile that he’d worn the night he’d escorted me along the North Terrace. He gestured for me to come to him, and my body seemed bound to do his bidding. Even now I felt it, urging me forward. I bobbed a curtsy to Rafe to give myself another precious moment of time to gather my thoughts.

“I bid you good day, my lord,” I said, and he bowed in response.

“Good day to you as well, Miss Fellowes.” Was that chagrin I heard in his voice? Was he truly dismayed that I was being summoned to discuss a betrothal? And if so . . .
what did that mean?

I moved with some reluctance past Walsingham and into the shadowy reserve of Cecil’s private domain. Walsingham shut the door behind him, cutting off the rolling noise of the Spaniards.

I approached Cecil’s desk and dropped a curtsy. Because, truly, whyever stop curtsying when there’s another to be made?

I rose, and Cecil looked at me with genuine worry in his gaze. “Whatever is the matter with you, Miss Fellowes? You look like you’re being sent to the gallows.”

I frowned at him, mutely lifting the summoning card. He glanced at it, then looked at Walsingham in exasperation. “Was that really necessary?”

Walsingham chuckled. “Miss Fellowes, how else would you have summoned a maid into a private conversation, through a gauntlet of Spaniards who need a reason not to pursue her farther than the door? Do you have a better suggestion?”

I blinked at him, and Cecil shook his head. “She is a maid of honor, Walsingham. We can summon her whenever we like.”

“She is an unmarried girl who’s going to find herself in close proximity to a knot of Spaniards too free with their time for their own good. And we may be summoning her quite frequently for the next fortnight, as well you know. Let it be thought that her marriage negotiations are under way. I know how much she’s looking forward to the wedded state.”