Maid of Wonder (15 page)

I laugh for the sheer joy of it, and then swing my gaze again out across the Presence Chamber, to where my dark angel stands. I frown, then stumble badly, causing Marcus to shout an alarm and the music to stop in a discordant, startled clash.

It is gone.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It is another hour before the maids and I can gather again in our chamber. After our dancing lesson Marcus tried to speak with me, but I fended him off. I am too raw, too out of step to talk with him. Further, I have reached the limits of my tolerance for Walsingham's disappearance. Once more, I sought out the Queen's advisor, traversing the entire length of the castle. Once more, I was denied. The man may be the Queen's spymaster, but he is also being insufferable, to make me wait so long. To make all of us wait, indeed.

If Nostradamus's strange words do in fact hold the key to deciphering Mother Shipton's prophecy about a death at Windsor castle, well, why shouldn't the Maids of Honor use that information to either verify or dispute my own angelic vision? Whether I am right, or Nostradamus is right, or we
both
are right, I will go into the convocation of seers well prepared.

“Well, go on, Sophia,” Beatrice speaks up now. “You look like you have just eaten a bird. What is it you learned last night?”

Meg leans forward, and Anna clasps her hands together,
her eyes mirror bright. Jane shifts onto the balls of her feet, as if she were preparing to do physical harm to any words I might speak that would put us in danger. Even Beatrice's face is pinched with worry.

Walsingham ordered my silence, but it is not Walsingham who will fight alongside me, should the battle lines be drawn.

I release a long breath, then begin the tale that already has been etched into my bones.

“I scried last night,” I say. “The angels' message was clear. There is not one, but two threats we must beware of at Windsor Castle. The first is an immediate one, a member of Windsor's household doomed to die in his bed. The second seems further off but is far more terrible: the death of the Queen upon a field of white.”

Something subtle shifts in everyone's demeanor then, bright and firm. The Maids of Honor recognizing a threat to our monarch. Unlike all too many young women our age, however, we do not flutter or gasp, or cry out in fear or worry at this terrible news. For Walsingham and Cecil have trained us well. We are spies for the Queen, yes, but we are also warriors. And warriors do not lament the terrible things that stand before them. They go about knocking those things down.

“White?” Jane speaks first, her words measured. “So, wintertide. We have some time to prepare, at least.”

“And a field means she is in the open country,” Anna says. “We'll be in London ere long, and we're not likely to find any open spaces there by the time the snow begins to fall. So perhaps not until late winter, or early spring.”

I nod, unable to dispel the strain I feel, despite their quite reasonable assessment. Just as with Walsingham, the maids have quickly driven to the heart of the matter. The Queen is under no immediate threat, not if she is to fall upon some snowy field. But still, something nags at me . . . something I cannot quite dispel.

“But what of this first death?” Meg asks. “That seems as though it will be the focus of the convocation of seers. How did the Queen phrase it?” She snaps her fingers, then assumes a rigid posture, her chin high, her hands curved into fists upon her hips. If her hair were red instead of dark brown, and her skin paler, she could pass as Elizabeth herself. “Who will die next at Windsor?” she demands, her voice flawlessly mimicking the Queen's. “And when, and how?”

“I'm going to have nightmares,” Beatrice mutters.

I feel my tension loosening, as it always does when I am with my fellow spies. I sit on my pallet and lean forward, my elbows on my knees as I share information so secret, not even the Queen has heard it yet. “I don't know the man, though Walsingham does. I told him my vision last night, and he recognized the person I was describing right away. He said it was Robert Moreland.”

“Moreland!” Beatrice speaks now, clearly surprised. “Whyever would he be at risk? He's no more royal than Meg.”

“I can be
extraordinarily
royal if the situation demands it,” Meg protests. “And I know the man as well. Tall, broad-shouldered? Red hair.”

“That's who I saw in my vision, yes.”

Jane shifts on her pallet. “It doesn't matter who he is,”
she says. “If the Queen thinks he's from some sort of royal house, and therefore a potential claimant to her throne, then the death that's been predicted will likely come from her own hands. She doesn't suffer competitors lightly.”

I frown, considering this.
Thank goodness Moreland is Walsingham's fast friend, or he might be in danger indeed.
“It could mean something else entirely, but on his deathbed there was a scepter and crown, and he was draped in a mantle of purple.”

Meg's laugh is rueful. “Definitely sounds like royalty.”

“But it's not possible.” Beatrice is up on her feet, pacing. “Moreland cannot be in line to the throne. He's a merchant from Gravesend, if I'm remembering the gossip correctly, and his very-pregnant wife is also the daughter of a merchant. His business is . . . wool, I think.”

“Perhaps the royalty connection is indirect, then?” Anna asks. “A brush with greatness once, naught more.” She frowns. “I canna imagine the Queen would wish him ill in that case, especially if he's a friend of Walsingham's.”

“Oh, I'm sure not,” Beatrice says drily. “I confess, I know nothing more about him, though. Where are his rooms?”

“Horseshoe Cloister,” Meg says. “Cecil assigned the Cloisters to me after Shipton's prediction upset the Queen. Your Robert Moreland was belting out a fairly bawdy tune the other day when I passed by him, and it was one I recognized from the western coastal villages. I asked him how he came to have heard such a song, and he confessed it was his mother's favorite. He seemed to care for the woman quite dearly, though I got the impression she's passed away. I liked him for that.”

I grimace. “Well, good son or no, that brings us no closer to understanding how Moreland could figure into a prediction about a royal house.”

“‘A royal house defeated,'”
Anna says, quoting the Shipton prophecy. “It does seem quite clear.”

“Unless the defeat is simply that the Queen could not keep this man safe?” Jane puts in, but I raise a hand to stop their conjectures.

“I have more to share, though it's no easier to understand,” I say. “Last night Walsingham bade me to go spy upon Nostradamus in his chambers.” I feel my cheeks color, even as I disobey the Queen's advisor by sharing yet more without his permission. “I was to tell no one what I saw.”

“Oh, excellent. Then exactly no one could help you,” Jane says, irritation clear in her voice.

“Did Nostradamus scry?” Beatrice's words are sharp with curiosity. “Surely he suspected we'd be watching him.”

“If he was concerned, he gave no sign of it. I entered a small corridor—”

“With a winding stair?” Jane asks.

“Spy holes stoppered up with clay?” Meg chimes in. The two spies grin at each other in triumph, pleased to be familiar with yet another cubbyhole cut into the castle walls.

“The very same,” I say, laughing. “And once I was in place at the top of the stair, I did watch Nostradamus scry.” I smoothly skip over the whole “dark spirit trapped in a triangle” part. Even my friends might not be comfortable with the ideas of demons visiting Windsor Castle. “And he received a prophecy.”

“No!” Anna fairly bounces with excitement. “Do you recall it exactly?”

As if I will ever forget it.
“I do. It makes no sense, of course, but perhaps you might be able to help me puzzle it out. Here are the words:

“Where the muddy river runs white

An eagle shall be born of a wren.

Doomed to fly into the jaws of a wolf,

His blood shall turn to gold.”

Instantly the Maids of Honor are alive with movement, walking and talking, staring and mumbling. “Muddy river turns white,” Anna muses as she strides over to a pile of books she's arranged on a side table, the precious tomes stolen from Dee's library. “That has to be the Thames. Frozen over? Or perhaps merely the Thames at wintertide, hmmm.” She hums a little, poking through the stack. “It seems to me there's a journal of seasons here . . .”

“An eagle is clearly a sign of royalty,” Beatrice puts in. “Blood to gold, as well, though that reference is more obscure.”

“The wren is the key, though,” Meg says, triumph in her voice. “What do we know about wrens?”

“Small, brown menaces,” Jane says. “Don't try to stay abed once their clamor starts up.”

“They're songbirds,” I say, my heart doing a little flip. “Like Moreland's mother.”

Beatrice's laugh is sharp and derisive. “And Moreland
looks to be about twenty-five, yes? Clothed in purple, with a scepter in his hands and a crown upon his head?” She rolls her eyes. “I bet I have the right of it. You don't grow up at court and miss those kinds of hints. In 1534, King Henry would have been still hale and hearty, and certainly not one to ignore a pretty distraction.”

“He took up with Moreland's mother.” Anna nods, frowning.

“Not even that, I wager,” Beatrice says. “Merely a night's dalliance, I suspect, while he was married to . . .” Her smile sharpens. “Well, well. The Queen's own mother, Anne Boleyn. That certainly would be a ‘disaster unforeseen,' if what Nostradamus
and
your angels say is true. If Henry bedded Moreland's mother, young Robert could potentially claim the throne. The way would be murky, but pretenders have waged campaigns with lesser cause.”

“Robert Moreland is the
least
likely pretender to the throne I've ever seen,” Meg says firmly. “He told me his father died when he was very young, that he cannot remember him. His mother remarried thereafter, and he's lived a very happy life. He's a wool merchant, not some lost prince pining after his crown.”

“His opinion wouldn't matter,” Beatrice says. “If it's merely suspected—and it will be, ere long, if both you and Nostradamus share what you've seen—then Moreland's life is in danger.”

“But my visions aren't always accurate,” I protest. “And Nostradamus receives prophecies so jumbled that they can be read sixteen different ways. Surely that is not enough to kill an innocent man over.”

“Here it is!” Anna's voice draws us all over to her side of the chamber, where she stands with an open book. “The Thames doesn't freeze over every year, of course, and not everywhere along its course when it does. But in 1534, right around the time when Moreland would have been born at Gravesend? It absolutely did. Or so it was recorded in this history. That year boasted one of the coldest winters ever.”

I turn back to Beatrice, and her face is grim. “This does not bode well for Moreland,” she says. “Or for his wife and child.”

A chill settles over me, but I try to push it back. “Again, all of these are but portents and possibilities,” I say. “We're drawing connections to support a vision that I may not be understanding correctly.”

“Yes, but first you, and then Nostradamus?” Anna holds her history book against her chest, almost like a shield. “Walsingham was closeted away this morning, but it's nearly high noon. Where would he be now?”

Jane's voice is hard and certain. “My money is on the Horseshoe Cloister.” She stands up briskly, shaking out her skirts. “What say we all have a look?”

But we are wrong. The five of us all but run to the Lower Ward, but once we reach there, we can do nothing but mill around like confused ducklings. The Cloister is as lively as it ever is, but the small apartment where the Morelands are quartered looks quiet, as if the family were out for an early afternoon stroll.

“Perhaps Walsingham has already warned them?” I suggest, but something still seems off to me. Uncertain.

“Perhaps.” Beatrice sighs. “But if he hasn't, then Robert Moreland remains in desperate danger, at least until we can clear this matter up. For even if Walsingham gets to him in time to spare his life, his troubles are not over. Not unless he can convince the Queen he's no threat to her crown, anyway.”

“Surely that's a simple enough task,” Meg says, and Beatrice nods.

“Yes, but one we'll have to handle delicately. If we can't speak to Walsingham before the convocation, it's up to us to draw his attention away during the event itself. Ideally
before
you and Nostradamus are set up to tilt at each other, Sophia. Until then, we wait.”

The others agree to the right of this, but as we leave the Horseshoe Cloister, I cannot return to the castle with my fellow spies. I am too disquieted by the day's events, nervous about what the night may bring. And unlike the other Maids of Honor, I do
not
have to tolerate the waiting. Meg may be a master thief and Beatrice a master manipulator. Jane may have her knives, and Anna, her books. But I am a
seer
, for the love of heaven.
Whatever I seek, surely I can find.