Maid of Wonder (24 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

We press forward. Marcus's hand is hard on my arm, keeping me close to him. I am grateful for his presence, if only to help us work our way through the crowd. At the center of the Upper Ward, Cecil glowers at me from a raised dais where the Queen is seated in full Samhain regalia, her dress deep blue and embroidered with pearls, a dark blue cape over her shoulders also studded with pearls. Relieved beyond measure that she is not gowned in black and gold, I avoid Cecil's hard eyes for a moment to take in Gloriana. Even her crown is more pearls than gold, it seems, and she faces the stage in rapt delight, as Master James explains that the scene he has prepared for us is a gathering of courtiers at a local inn, brought together by a stranger's invitation. “As the evening and the conversation progress, and the night draws down, who knows what secrets may be revealed!” he announces, and the crowd breaks into wild applause.

But Cecil's glare draws me back before I can see who has assembled on the stage. He slides his glance between me and Marcus, and I cannot tell if there is approval or censure in
his regard. Probably a bit of both. This is Cecil, after all. He seems to be trying to tell me something else, and I fight the urge to smile. I am certain that reading minds would have been Cecil's preferred psychic gift for me; alas, I can only see into the future. He will have to settle for that.

The crowd pushes and pulls at us, and I strain to see not only what is happening on the stage, but who else has gathered in the Upper Ward. Finally I step up onto a low bench, and the scene is laid out before me. Laughing, Marcus hops up as well, taking my hand in his. A quick glance round the Quadrangle reveals Walsingham watching in the crowd, and the Maids of Honor at their stations. And someone else, too.

Mistress Maude has come to watch
The Play of Secrets
.

A chill slides through me, chasing away much of my good mood. Even if she is not an immediate threat to the Queen, the woman is a menace! Nevertheless, the round and ruddy herb mistress stands quite at her ease, grinning at the edge of the crowd as she is flanked on either side by the Queen's guards. They do not push or harry her, however. If anything, they seem to be protecting her from any jostling of her fellows; her position is clearly one of honor. I resolutely force myself not to stare, and shift my gaze away. She will not ruin tonight's celebration.

Marcus tightens his hand on mine, and I frown, blinking as the scene begins to shift and roll. It's as if I were dreaming awake, and I shake my head.

“You feel it, then?” Marcus has leaned down to speak into my ear, and I shiver at his nearness. “I hoped you
would, but it's not as if I've been given much chance to put my theory about our connection to the test.”

“You're making me feel this way?” I ask. “But how?”

His smile is rueful. “Without Dee's incantations I cannot go with you to the other side, Sophia. I cannot do what you do. Would that I could! But since the moment I first saw you, and especially when we danced together, I suspected I could do this.”

He brings his other hand round, pressing mine between his palms, and I feel the sudden shift of my senses, signaling that the angelic realm has been opened to me. Then I clasp Marcus's hands as well, reveling in his strength, his certainty.

And just like that, I fall away from this world—and into the spectral plane.

I stare around myself, trying to see everything at once. There are the crowds surrounding the stage, cheering, laughing, drinking, eating cakes. And also, ringing round the space, as plain as day to my Sighted eyes, there stand both the angels and the dead.

It is easy to tell the difference between the once- and never-living. The angels—spirits—are serene, almost smiling. Drinking in the emotions of anger, excitement, joy, lust. They shimmer with the intensity of all that is going on before their eyes, a few of them reaching out as if to feel the experience more deeply. This is what Samhain means to them. The veil has been drawn back, and they can drink their fill of mortal emotions, savoring each drop.

The dead, however, are reacting entirely differently. It is as though they were trying to burst out of their ghostly skin.
They seem to hurl themselves forward without moving, their eyes desperate and beseeching, streaming with tears, desperately wanting someone—
anyone
—to see them, to notice them. It is completely unnerving.

A movement in one of the high windows captures my attention, and I peer up into the large chamber I know to be Saint George's Hall. The very
abandoned
Saint George's Hall. But now there is someone standing in one of its tall windows, someone who stares at the chaos below. And with my Sight-aided eyes, I recognize this woman, for all that she was dead long before I was born.

It is the shade of Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth's mother.

She is beautiful. Tall and straight, with jet-black hair and dark eyes, she gazes at the scene before her in rapt fascination, her wide mouth parting in soft surprise. Clearly, she sees her daughter sitting as monarch in the midst of a revel and a rout. Sees her, and must realize that she has won. Anne could not keep her crown as Queen, but by God her daughter will.

I feel Marcus's hands tightening, and I slip further away from the present world and into the angelic realm. Only, it is different. Vastly different. Where before the angels were always muted drifters, their shadowy figures fading in and out of focus, now they are sharply drawn. They look up, almost shocked to see me, as if I, too, am different to them. And in the distance, so far as to almost be indiscernible, a burst of flame shoots up in the darkness. I am smote with a wave of emotion so strong, so intense that I wrench my hands apart, jerking back. “Marcus!” I gasp, and once more we are in the Upper Ward. “How did you do that?”

He grins at me. “You have your talents, Sophia, and I have mine. I can channel for earthbound seekers, certainly, and your uncle pays me well for that skill. But I can also serve as a sort of
prism
for a true scryer's light, to focus and refine it, creating an illumination beyond compare so that they might better see what the angelic realm holds. With my touch, you cannot go too deep into the realm, but you will see farther, I swear it.” His voice drops. “Your light, Sophia. You have to realize how brightly it burns.”

I shake my head, lifting my hand to my right eye. There is no blood this time. I am not at all harmed from the startlingly clear vision of the angelic realm. I am not tired, nor lost upon my return—also a first for me. Marcus watches me with knowing eyes, smiling when my gaze returns to him, tracking my understanding. “I have never worked with someone with as strong a connection to the spirit realm as you, Sophia. Think of what we might find, should we search together.”

Held in the momentary thrall of that vision, I see the future that we might have together, as elusive as any spirit. Marcus would help me, standing always at the gates of the plane of angels, ready to pull me back, to bring me home.
And one day we could even scry together.
Explore the spectral realm as one. That idea should excite me, and yet all I feel is fear. A warning, dark and inscrutable, and right on the edge of my understanding.

Because something horrible awaits the unwary on the spirit plane,
the angels seem to whisper in the back of my mind.
Something terrible. Forbidden.

I push those thoughts away and give his hand a squeeze,
shivering anew at the sudden prickling of my senses. “Will it always be this way when our hands meet now?” I ask Marcus. “My Sight will be sharpened, but I will feel dizzy, out of step?”

He winks at me. “I make every woman feel dizzy. You'll get used to it.”

With a short laugh, I turn again to focus on
The Play of Secrets
. Upon the stage, dinner is being served to the courtiers, and they are truly a motley bunch: lords great and small, the head of the guards, and a man I suspect is one of Walsingham's spies, for all his foppish ways. At the head of the table is Master James himself, and to his right, no less than Robert Dudley. No wonder the Queen is so focused on the play. Wherever Robert Dudley goes, her eyes are sure to follow.

I turn to watch a “servant” step up onto the stage, bearing a tray heavily laden with soul cakes for all the players, and a flagon of what appears to be wine. “Well, well,” I say. “I'll wager Cecil and Walsingham have drugged that wine.” And three guesses on who sold them the herbs to do it. No wonder Maude feels comfortable here!

“In the middle of a theatrical production?” Marcus asks. “Isn't that unwise?”

His surprise is reasonable, but I am certain I am correct. Maude's truth tonic played so well the night of the convocation of seers, as did Walsingham's poison, that the advisors have clearly become greedy.

“Drink, drink!” James laughs from atop the stage. “To Queen and country, both so fair as to charm the dead from their very graves.”

There's a murmur of nervous laughter in the crowd, and the men onstage lift their cups, then take healthy draughts. James does the same, I see, and I watch as he downs all his wine. If the Queen's advisors have indeed drugged the flagon with Mistress Maude's tincture, this could make for an interesting evening.

The production goes on, and the jokes get ever more ribald—gossiping really, about this maid or that, this Frenchman or that Spaniard, and all of the hardships that go with living in the Queen's court. “The incessant dancing!” Master James proclaims. “So much revelry, so much to celebrate! Why, you would think she is the Queen of all the world, so much attention she draws.”

“And so she is!” Robert Dudley slams his cup of wine down onto the table, the shock of the sudden movement causing the audience to jump. “She is the heaven and the earth, the greatest ruler to ever grace England. She will be spoken about until time immemorial. She is our
Queen
.” Dudley speaks with earnest conviction, his heart in his words, and my gaze flies to Elizabeth—as do the rest of the court's, I'm sure. For a brief, naked moment, she looks back at Dudley as if he were both her greatest joy and also her most everlasting sorrow. Then the mantle of her rule returns to settle around her shoulders, and she smiles graciously, accepting Dudley's words as if they are her due. Dudley, for his part, is panting, almost wide-eyed, but Master James merely laughs. “Indeed, as you say it, so then it is true! Would you like to propose the next toast, then?” The troupe master's words are bright and bold, shimmering in the air, but Dudley falters back, wise
enough not to be drawn out as he sinks into his chair. “More wine!” he shouts instead.

“Huzzah!” James cheers, and the actors from his own troupe cheer as well, joined a half second later by the nobles, who seem to be meeting themselves coming and going at this point. One by one they all stand up, the actors playing their roles expertly, each of their fake secrets louder and more shocking than the last. The nobles begin to follow suit, seeming to forget that the secrets spilled by the actors are fabrications, whereas the secrets
they
are spilling have the uncanny ring of truth. I suspect that somewhere in this crowd, Walsingham is taking note. Somewhere in this crowd, Meg is committing to memory every statement, every chance comment. I cannot tell if Master James is playing along or if he's worked with Cecil to orchestrate the entire charade, but even he is looking a little desperate. Perhaps the play is getting out of hand?

At that moment, however, a chair topples over onstage. A young nobleman jumps to his feet, his face as flushed crimson as his doublet. “No!” he says, pointing into the crowd. “It cannot be! You are dead!”

With the benefit of my Sight, I see the shade that the courtier has spied. It is an ancient, wasp-faced man, who looks as cruel in the everafter as he doubtless did in life, his anger and belligerence so brightly obvious to me that only death could keep him on his side of the veil. And on this night, of all the nights, it seems the dead really are coming back to walk among the living.

The ladies and lords gasp and quickly spin round, looking
for the new player in their midst. I feel their apprehension swirl up as they realize no one is standing there, that the man on stage is seeing a ghost. I hear a woman cry out, a lord's nervous laugh, but as the courtier stares in growing horror, fear takes hold of the crowd. For most of the watchers, the space where the young man is staring is patently, obviously empty. Until suddenly it isn't.

“I am as dead as dead can be, Lord John, but 'tis no fault of yours indeed!”

Meg steps into the empty space where the young lord is staring. He blinks at her, shaking his head like a wounded bull.

Meg, however, continues on as if she were born to the stage—which, of course, she was. “You've cried more tears than I e'er deserved, but now I'm here your soul to serve. Look ye all!” Meg commands, and she lifts her hand in a proud flourish. “For I am Lord John's cousin if you didn't know. Prettiest girl in the village, I'm here to tell you so. Lord John urged me to have a care, but I told him I'd do as I dared.”