Suzanne Robinson (24 page)

There was silence for a moment, then his head sank down and he rested his forehead against hers “Oh,
chère
, I think I’ve lost the battle.”

In a chateau on the Loire, floating in mist and encased in frost, lay a stair in a tower At the top of that winding stair lay a polished mahogany door, and behind the door a room of Persian carpets, silken tapestries, and sweet incense. Before the arched and faceted window was set a carved table graced with a silver quill holder and ink pot, a golden drinking cup inlaid with amethysts and pearls, and the Cardinal of Lorraine, its owner.

His soft golden hair was combed and crowned by a black cap, and he wore riding dress instead of his cassock. In demeanor he looked and was almost a prince. Son and brother of a duke, he wielded the power of a prince with as ruthless a will as his opponent, the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici.

At the moment he was engaged in exercising that power. He held a much-folded letter in his hand and read it by the light of a candelabra on the table. A man in traveling clothes waited, hat in hand, while the cardinal read and slapped his riding crop against his boot. Whimsical dark eyes lifted to glance at the messenger.

“So, Alain,” the cardinal said. “The old man is dead, and his secrets remain hidden.”

“Oui, mon cardinal.”

“And my English intelligencer only now has been warned of the Sieur de Racine.”

“Oui, mon cardinal.”

“I like it not, this delay.” The cardinal touched the letter to the candle flame and held it while it burned. “Nor will I suffer being confounded by a young Anglo-French minstrel who seems to have cavorted freely about the court and played havoc with all our stratagems for years.”

The cardinal turned and went to the window, where he looked out at the roofs of the chateau and the mist that curled and twisted on the ground below. His long, manicured fingers tapped a diamond-shaped pane.

“I think, Alain, that we must capture ourselves a nightingale, a nightingale too dangerous to be allowed to fly free and untamed.” He turned to face the messenger. Examining the ebony handle of his riding crop, he continued. “You will return to my English confederate and communicate my wishes. I charge you with the governance of this matter, for the English lack the subtlety and refinement so necessary for successful treason.”

Resembling a cadaver more than a man, Alain smiled. The grimace disfigured his already macabre appearance, giving his face the expression of a tortured soul in hell.

“And the Sieur de Racine, Your Eminence?”

“Ah, the Sieur de Racine.”

The cardinal turned back to the window and unlatched it. He pushed it open with the tip of his riding crop and leaned against the casement as he gazed at the white-shrouded stonework below.

“An enticing problem. One needful of careful consideration as to the solution.” The moments went by while the cardinal slapped the palm of his hand with the crop.

“Frenchmen,” the cardinal said at last, “belong in France, Alain. Do you not agree?”

“Oui, mon cardinal.”

“Even those whose blood has been tainted by the barbarian blood of the English.”

“Oui
, Your Eminence.”

“Then you have your charge. I will expect your return anon, with the proof I require, Alain. With the proof I require.”

Alain departed, and the cardinal lifted the heavy drinking cup to his lips. The discovery of the Sieur de Racine had rankled. He wasn’t used to being bested. He prided himself on knowing everything of importance, on his guile and perception. This boy had outwitted him. He would pay for it, and in doing so, learn what it was to cross the path of the Cardinal of Lorraine.

Oriel leaned over her mare’s neck and slapped the reins against her withers. Plunging through the forest at a canter, she skirted trees and ducked overhanging branches until she broke free of the vegetation. Kicking her mount to a gallop, she hurtled across a meadow toward the old hunting lodge. It lay at the edge of the forest in the narrow meadow between the eastern hills and the trees. A small place, its red brick crawled with ivy, and its latticed and mullioned windows sparkled in the sunlight.

She galloped up to the entryway, reined in, and sent pebbles flying as the mare dug her hooves into the ground. Out of breath, she was dismounting as Blade came out to meet her. He caught her and lifted her to the ground. Taking the mare’s reins, he walked with her
around the back of the house while she took in great gulps of air.

Blade chuckled as he looked at her. “Why such haste? I would have waited.”

“N—Nell.” She wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “It’s Nell. She fell in the well behind the house in the kitchen yard. She’s dead, and all this time I thought she was hiding.”

They had reached the stables where Blade’s stallion was. He didn’t reply as he removed the mare’s saddle and began wiping the horse down

“Poor Nell. She was a good woman.”

Blade threw a blanket over the mare, put her in a stall, and shut the door. “Children fall down wells,
chère
, not grown women.”

“Not so. Old Goody Alice fell in this very well not three years ago.”

“An old woman.” Blade took her arm and guided her back to the lodge. “I had just finished with my horse when you came. Are you sure no one will disturb us?”

“Yes. George and the others sometimes use the lodge for hunting, but they’re to go to Norfolk for a boar hunt soon, so they won’t come here. Mostly we use it for a retreat when Richmond Hall is sweetened in the spring.”

They entered the lodge from the rear and passed through the kitchen and scullery. She led Blade to the front, to a room off the hall. Walking to the center of the chamber, she lifted both hands to indicate the oak paneling that lined all four walls.

“I told you. Oak leaves. And look.”

She pointed to the lintel of the door. Upon it, flanked by two oak leaf devices set in rectangular frames, was inscribed the Latin saying they’d seen in Uncle Thomas’s journal.

“ ‘Fronti nulla fides’
—no reliance can be placed on appearance. You see, Uncle Thomas used to live here
when he was much younger, and this was his study. He took most of his books and papers away though.”

Blade looked at the inscription, then paced to the windows that took up most of one wall. They formed part of the front face of the lodge. He looked out, sweeping the meadow with his gaze.

“Is aught wrong?” she asked.

“I like not this second death so near the first. You’re sure no one knows where you are?”

“Yes. I stole away while everyone was still at table. The head groomsman wanted to send a man with me, but I had a fit of temper and frightened him.” Blade was looking at her with a sadness she’d never seen in him.

“Chère
, there is danger. Don’t you see it?”

“Of course I see, but we must continue our search.”

“You’re not thinking. Someone close to you has been killed, and I fear for you. I’m leaving my man René with you while I’m gone to London.”

Blade was still gazing out the window. She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He pulled off his gloves and slapped them against his thigh. “Very well. Now that we’ve found these oak leaves of great import, what shall we do?”

“I suppose we must search.”

She went to a group of chests that had been shoved into a corner and began opening them. Blade joined her, but the search only yielded old tradesmen’s bills and accounts of expenditures from the time of Uncle Thomas’s residence at the lodge. Sitting back on her heels, she dusted her hands while Blade closed the last chest and glanced about the room.

“Not a cupboard or a wardrobe,” he said.

He went to the chimneypiece and ran his fingers along the foliate carving. She watched him, still crouched beside the chests, and tried to ignore the tiny sliver of suspicion that jabbed at her. Blade Fitzstephen seemed to know a great deal about searching someone else’s possessions. She rubbed her chin and followed his
movements as he left the fireplace and started tapping the oak leaf panels. Pausing, he looked over his shoulder at her.

“Get off your delicious bottom and help me.”

“How haps it that—”

“Not now,
chère.”

She sighed and joined him in examining the wall panels. She progressed with no results until she came to a long table set against the wall opposite the windows. Oriel grasped one end and shoved, pushing it away from the wall. Here, as elsewhere, the paneling was divided into rectangular insets bordered with carved oak leaves, and the floor was covered with plain tiles. She was tapping panels when one of the floor tiles caught her eye. Unlike the rest, it had a decoration in one of the corners, an iris. Her fingers paused in mid tap. An iris.

“Blade.”

She beckoned to him, and he joined her. Pointing with the toe of her boot, she indicated the floor tile. The iris design was faintly etched.

“An iris,” he said, meeting her gaze, “Meaning …”

“A message,” she finished for him.

“Was this always here?”

“I know not.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “There is no dirt in the etching at all.”

Blade stooped and pressed the tile, but nothing happened. He produced a dagger and stuck the tip in between the tile and its neighbor.

“Hold a moment,” she said She stepped on the tile with the toe of her boot and heard a click. Above, one of the wall panels swung open.

He stood and smiled at her. “I do so love your keen wit, Oriel Richmond.”

She flushed at the praise and pushed the panel open. Within was a compartment the size of the panel, and there lay a single roll of parchment. Blade took it, and
she closed the panel. The floor tile clicked back into place. She followed Blade to the window. He was holding the parchment to the light and examining the seal with its dangling ribbons.

“An ecclesiastical seal,” he said.

“Should we wait?”

“Marry,
chère
, there’s too much danger to wait.”

He broke the seal and unrolled the paper. They read the text together. Her gaze traveled to the bottom of the page and took in the signature of Uncle Thomas, and of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. It was Henry Percy’s deathbed confession. In a fine Italianate script were set out the last words of the earl, in which he confessed that in the year 1523, he and Mistress Anne Boleyn had consummated their betrothal vows. He begged forgiveness from the Almighty and commended his soul to Christ. Three witnesses signed the document—Percy’s chaplain, his steward, and Uncle Thomas. All of the men were dead.

“Christ.”
Blade released the bottom of the parchment and it curled up.

Oriel found that her hands were cold, even in her gloves. She removed the gloves, and saw that her hands were shaking.

“No wonder Uncle Thomas hid it so well,” she said.

“But how could he have kept this, knowing the danger?” Blade asked. “Why didn’t he destroy it?”

“You must understand Uncle Thomas. He would never destroy anything so important to his friend, and as a scholar he would have valued the truth as well. Knowing him, I believe he kept the confession for the sake of history.”

Blade rolled the parchment into a tight cylinder. Turning to her, he said, “Nevertheless, we must destroy this at once.”

As he spoke, the chamber door crashed open.

“Don’t do that if you value my cousin’s life.”

Leslie walked into the room followed by several
armed men. One held a bow with an arrow aimed at Oriel. Leslie came toward her, reached out and grabbed her arm. Blade moved, but the bowman pulled back on the arrow, and he subsided Leslie hauled her to his side.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“He’s betraying his queen,” Blade said.

Oriel looked up at Leslie. “You?”

“Yes, me. You see, coz, I’m tired of being treated like a beggar by my own brothers. Tired of being the useless extra brother, the one no one trusts with money, the one who gets nothing because he was born last. The reward for my service will be a barony, or perchance an earldom. And I will have made a queen.” Leslie drew his dagger and pointed it at Oriel’s stomach. “The paper, Fitzstephen.”