Midnight Never Come (8 page)

The stranger was gone by the time he reached the third floor, but the steps continued upward in a secondary staircase, cramped and ending in a half-height door that was obviously used for maintenance. Deven yanked the door open and wedged himself through, into the cold, drenching rain.

He was on the roof. To his right, low crenellations guarded the drop-off to the lower Paradise Chamber. He looked left, across the pitched sheets of lead, and just made out the figure of the stranger, running along the roof.

Madness, to give chase on a rooftop, with his footing made uncertain by rain-slicked lead. But Deven had only an instant to decide his course of action, and his blood was up.

He pursued.

The rooftop was an alien land, all steep angles and crenellated edges, with turrets rising here and there like masts without sails. The path the stranger took was straight and level, though, unbroken by chambers, and that was what oriented Deven in his fragmentary map of Hampton Court: they were running along the roof of the Long Gallery, back the direction he had come.

In his head, he heard the usher say,
The quickest path would be through these chambers . . .

The gallery led straight toward the room where Elizabeth sat with her ladies, whiling away her sleeplessness with music.

Deven redoubled his efforts, flinging caution to the wind, keeping to his feet mostly because his momentum carried him forward before he could fall. He was gaining on the stranger, not yet close enough to grab him, but nearly —

Lightning split the sky, half-blinding him, and as thunder followed hard on its heels Deven tried too late to stop.

Brick cracked him across the knees, halting his stride instantaneously. But his weight carried him forward, and he pitched over the top of the crenellations, hands flying out in desperation, until his left fingers seized on something and brought him around in a shoulder-wrenching arc. His right hand found brick just in time to keep him from losing his grip and falling a full story to the lower rooftop below.

He hung from the crenellations, gasping for air, with the rain sending rivers of water through his hair and clothes to puddle in his boots.

His left shoulder and hand ached from the force of stopping his fall, but Deven dragged himself upward, grunting with effort, until at last he could hook one foot over the bricks and get his body past the edge. Then he collapsed in the narrow wedge where the pitch of the roof met the low wall of the crenellations and let himself realize he wasn’t about to fall to his death.

The stranger.

Deven twisted to look over the wall, onto the roof of the chambers where Elizabeth listened to the virginals. He saw no sign of the intruder anywhere on the rain-streaked lead, and no hatches hung open in the turrets that studded the corners of the extension; through the grumble of the storm, he heard a faint strain of music. But that meant nothing save that no one had been hurt yet.

Even if Deven could have made the jump down, he could not burst in on the Queen, soaked to the bone and with his doublet torn, its stuffing leaking out like white cotton entrails. He hauled himself to his feet, wincing as his bruised knees flared, and began his limping progress back along the Long Gallery, to the door that had led him up there to begin with.

His news, predictably, caused a terrible uproar, and soon a great many people were roused out of bed, but the intruder had vanished without a trace. Some time later, no longer dripping but still considerably damp, Deven found himself having to relate the story to Lord Hunsdon, from his arrival at Hampton Court that night up to the present moment.

“You saw nothing of his face?” Hunsdon asked, fingers tapping a worried beat on the desk before him.

Deven was forced to shake his head. “He wore a cap low on his head, and we stood some ways apart, with only one candle for light. He seemed a smallish fellow, and dressed more like a laborer than a gentleman, but beyond that I cannot say.”

“Where do you think he went, after you lost him?”

The chambers there connected at their corner to the courtiers’ lodgings that ringed the Base Court; from there, the man might have run nearly anywhere, though the soaring height of the Great Hall would have forced him to circumnavigate the courtyard if he wished to go somewhere else. There was no good access to the ground; everything was at least two stories. With rope, he might have gone through a second-floor window, but they found no such rope, nor sign of a very wet man coming in anywhere.

The last Deven had seen of the man was when they reached the end of the gallery, and the stranger . . . leapt over the edge.

No, not quite. The man had leapt, yes, but upward, into the air — not as a man would jump if he intended a landing on a pitched roof below.

After that, his memory only offered him the flapping of wings.

He shook his head again, shivering in his damp, uncomfortable clothes. “I do not know, my lord. Out into the gardens, perhaps, and from thence into the Thames. Or perhaps there was a boat waiting for him.” How he would have gotten from a second- or third-floor roof to the gardens, Deven could not say, but he had no better explanation to offer.

Nor, it seemed, did Hunsdon. The baron’s mouth was set in a grim line. “It seems the Queen is safe for now. But we shall stay alert for future trouble. If you see the fellow again . . .”

Deven nodded. “I understand, my lord.” He might walk past the man in the street and not know him. But Deven believed now, as he had not truly before, that the Queen’s enemies might stage threats against her life. His duty was more than simply to stand at her door with a gold-covered ax.

He prayed such a threat would not come again. But if it did, then next time, he would be more effective in stopping it.

M
EMORY
:
July 12, 1574

T
he sleeping man lay in an untidy sprawl on his bed. The covers, kicked aside some time earlier, disclosed an aging body, a sagging belly usually hidden by the peasecod front of his doublets, and his dark hair was thinning. He was still fit enough — not half so far gone as some other courtiers — but the years were beginning to tell on him.

In his mind, though, in his dreams, he was still the young man he had been a decade or two before.

Which suited very well the purposes of the being that came to visit him that night.

How it slipped in, no observer could have said. Under the edge of the door, perhaps, or out of the very stuff of shadows. It showed first as a stirring in the air, that coalesced into an indistinct shape, which drifted gently through the chamber until it reached the bed.

Hovering over the sleeping man, the figure took more distinct shape and color. A fluttering linen chemise, freed from the constraints of bodice and kirtle and the usual court finery. Auburn hair, flowing loose, its tips not quite brushing the man below. A high forehead, and carmined lips that parted in an inviting smile.

The man sighed and relaxed deeper into his dream.

Robert Dudley was hunting, riding at a swift canter through open fields, pursuing hounds that gave the belling cry of prey sighted. At his side rode a woman, a red-haired woman. He thought, faintly, that she had been someone else a moment ago — surely it was so — but now she was younger, her hair a darker shade of red.

And they were not riding, they were walking, and the hounds had vanished. A pleasant stream laughed to itself, hidden somewhere in the reeds to one side. The sunlight was warm, casting green-gold light down through the trees; up ahead the landscape opened into a grassy meadow, with something in it. A structure. A bower.

Curtains fluttered invitingly around the bed that stood within.

Clothing vanished at a thought, leaving skin upon skin, and together they tumbled into bed. Auburn hair cascaded around him, a second curtain, and Robert Dudley gazed adoringly into the face of Lettice Knollys, all logic and reason crumbling before the onslaught of passion that overwhelmed him.

Easy enough, to fan the flames of an early flirtation into a conflagration. He would not remember this upon waking, not as anything more than an indistinct dream, but it would serve its purpose nonetheless. And if Lettice Knollys were in truth Lettice Devereux, Lady Hereford, and wed elsewhere, it did not matter. Dudley did not have to marry her. He had only to give his heart, turning it from the target at which it had ever been fixed: his beloved Queen Elizabeth.

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, moaned deep in his throat as he writhed on the bed, aware of nothing but the dream that suffused his mind. Above him hovered the ghostly form of Lettice Knollys, perfect as she had never been, even in the blossom of her youth.

The scholars of Europe spoke of demons they called succubi. But more than one kind of creature in the world wielded such power, and not all served the devil.

Some served a faerie Queen, and did her bidding with pleasure, dividing from the mortal Queen her most loyal and steadfast admirer.

A man might die of such surfeit. The ghostly figure lost its definition, fading once more into indistinct mist, and with an unfulfilled sigh the Earl of Leicester subsided into dreamless sleep.

There would be other nights. The creature that visited him considered itself an artist. It would work upon him by slow degrees, building his desire until he thought of no one else. And when his heart turned away from the mortal Queen, and the creature’s work here was done. . . .

There would be other mortals. Invidiana always had use for this creature’s talents.

W
HITEHALL
P
ALACE
, W
ESTMINSTER
:
November 3, 1588

Deven stood in front of the polished mirror and ran one hand over his jaw, checking for stubble. Colsey had shaved him that morning, and his hair was newly trimmed into one of the more subdued styles currently fashionable; he wore a rose-red doublet with a falling collar, collected from the tailor only yesterday when the court completed its move into Whitehall, and even his low shoes were laced with silk ribbons. He looked better than he had when he was first presented to the Queen, but felt very nearly as inadequate.

From behind him, Colsey said, “Best you get moving, master.”

The reminder was appreciated, though a little presumptuous —Colsey occasionally forgot he was not Deven’s father, to order him about. It made Deven take a deep breath and turn away from his blurred reflection in the mirror, setting himself toward the door like a man at the tilt.

Tilting. He had thought about entering the upcoming Accession Day jousts, but knew it would be a waste of his time and coin; certainly one could catch the Queen’s eye by performing well, but he was at best indifferent with the lance. He would have to content himself with the usual pageantry of the Gentlemen Pensioners, who would make a brave show around Elizabeth during the celebrations.

He had a hard time focusing on pageantry, though, when his feet were leading him toward a real chance for success at court.

He fingered the tabs at the bottom of his new doublet and wondered if it looked too frivolous. A useless thought — he had not the time to go change — but he was second-guessing himself at every turn today.

Deven gritted his teeth and tried to banish his nerves.

Several men were in the chamber when he arrived, and a number more came and went. Such was the inevitable consequence of absence from court, even with someone like Beale to cover one’s duties. But Deven was expected, and so he waited very little before being ushered into the chamber beyond, where the Principal Secretary sat behind a small mountain of paper.

Deven advanced halfway across the floor and then knelt on the matting. “Master Secretary.”

Sir Francis Walsingham looked tired in the thin November sunlight that filtered through the palace’s narrow windows. They had not been lying, when they said he was ill; the marks of it showed clearly. Deven had met him twice before — the rest of their dealings had been through intermediaries — and so he had sufficient basis for comparison. Walsingham was dark complected for an Englishman, but his skin had a pale, unhealthy cast to it, and there were circles under his eyes.

“I am glad,” Deven said, “that God has seen fit to restore you to health.”

Walsingham gestured for him to rise. “My illness was unfortunate, but ’tis past. Beale tells me you have some matter you would beg of me.”

“Indeed.” He had expected more small talk beforehand, but given the pile of work facing Walsingham, perhaps he should not be surprised the man wished to cut directly to what was relevant. That encouraged Deven to speak plainly, as he preferred, rather than larding his words with decoration, which seemed to be a substantial art form at court.

He clasped his hands behind his back and began. “I wished to thank you in person for your good office in securing for me the position I now hold in the Gentlemen Pensioners.”

“ ’Tis no great matter,” Walsingham said. “You did me good service among the Protestants in the Low Countries, and your father has much aided her Majesty in the suppression of seditious pamphlets.”

“I am glad to have been of service,” Deven answered. “But I hope my use might not end there.”

The dark eyes betrayed nothing more than mild curiosity. “Say on.”

“Master Secretary, the work I did on your behalf while on the continent made it clear to me that the defense of her Majesty — the defense of England — depends on many types of action. Some, like armies and navies, are public. Others are not. And you are clearly a general in the secret sort of war.”

The Principal Secretary’s lips twitched behind their concealing beard. “You speak of it in poetic terms. There is little of poetry in it, I fear.”

“I do not seek poetry,” Deven said. “Only a chance to make my mark in the world. I have no interest in following my father in the Stationers’ Company, nor does Gray’s Inn hold me. To be utterly frank, my desire is to be of use to men such as yourself, who have the power and the influence to see me rewarded. My father earned the rank of gentleman; I hope to earn more.”