The Lady of Secrets

The other books in the Dark Queen series

Edinburgh 1591

I
T WAS A FAIR DAY FOR A BURNING.

Maidred Brody had heard the guards talking just before dawn. The breeze coming off the firth was soft, a mere whisper to tickle the cheeks. Not nearly strong enough to make lighting the faggots difficult or to fan the flames away from the fodder they were meant to consume.

The fodder.
They were talking about her, her own too-tender flesh and fragile bones. As the voices drifted farther away from the narrow grate that marked her only contact with the world outside her cell, Maidred shuddered. She burrowed deeper beneath the filthy straw as though she were a field mouse escaping detection.

But there was no escaping her thoughts. She rubbed her fingers over the tiny raised scar on her wrist where she had
once burned herself on a hot kettle. The pain had been so intense she had wailed and carried on until her old nursemaid had given her a smack and commanded her sternly to stop raising such a fuss. If Maidred had been unable to tolerate that small burn, however would she endure being roasted alive, the greedy flames scorching and blackening her sensitive skin, peeling it away from her body?

Tears streamed down Maidred’s cheeks. She shoved her fist in her mouth to stifle her sobs lest she wake her companion. But she doubted anything could disturb Tamsin.

Although old Tam was under the same sentence of death as Maidred, the crone had slept like a babe last night. Her snores resonated across the cell although the pale morning light filtered through the grate. The last morning of their lives …

Maidred trembled and rocked herself, trying to claw her way back to the pretty place inside her head that had sustained her through much of these last two years since her mother had died. A castle lost in the mists of a faraway island.

“I am a princess in the court of the Lady of Faire Isle, a sorceress of great power and beauty,” she whispered to herself. “I live in her golden palace and wear gowns of gossamer silk. We have a hundred handsome knights to attend upon us, to protect us, to rescue—”

The creak of the heavy oak door shattered the illusion, flinging her back to the cold hard floor of her cell. They were coming for her. So soon? She scrambled up, her heart thudding as her gaoler pushed open the door.

Master Galbraith was a tall broad-shouldered man who had to duck beneath the lintel as he entered her cell. But for
all his alarming size, his heavy jowls gave him the look of a sorrowful hound. He had been kind to Maidred ever since the dread sentence of death by fire had been pronounced against her. His gaze rested upon her with an expression of such pity, she felt tears start to her eyes all over again.

She glanced wildly about her cell, seeking in vain for some escape. Unbelievably, Tam slumbered on as though she had not a care in the world.

Maidred cowered back in the corner, pleading, “Please. Please don’t—”

“Nae, lass,” Master Galbraith interrupted her soothingly. “Dinna ye distress yourself. Not yet. I but come to bring ye a visitor.”

A visitor Maidred had been dreading and expecting. The priest who would pray with her, give her the last rites. She must be as wicked as the judge had proclaimed because she could not seem to regard the advent of this holy man as any comfort, only the harbinger of death.

But it was not the dark-robed minister of the kirk who crept into the cell. It was the one person Maidred had never expected to see again. Her brother.

Maidred’s breath left her in a rush at the sight of Robert Brody, a lad not much taller than herself, his hair the same golden brown. But there the resemblance ended. Although they were twins and Maidred the elder by a matter of minutes, Robbie appeared far older than their fifteen years. Grief, care, and toil had chiseled all boyish softness from his gaunt features.

Shadows pooled beneath eyes that had once sparkled with such teasing laughter, Maidred had called him her Robin Goodfellow. Back when they had played at knights, dragons,
and faeries beneath the willows on the riverbank, halcyon childhood days so long ago Maidred feared she was the only one who remembered.

Master Galbraith ushered her brother farther into the cell and then stepped aside. “This could cost me my post, lad, so I cannot allow ye more than a few minutes.”

Robbie nodded, passing a lean purse to the gaoler. Maidred flinched. Her brother must have bribed Master Galbraith for this visit with some of his meager supply of coin, money that he had earned with backbreaking labor in the laird’s stable.

The gaoler quit the cell, closing the door behind him. Maidred stiffened as her brother drew nearer. Never had she been so glad to see anyone, but she wished he had not come. She felt so ashamed she could scarce meet his eyes, guilt-ridden for the trouble that she had heaped upon his overburdened shoulders, mortified that he should see her thus, looking like some common slattern.

How pathetic she must appear, her kirtle filthy from the effusions of her own body and the stink of the cell, a fetid mingling of urine, dung, and sweat. Her hair was matted and unkempt, her cheeks stained with her tears.

A heavy silence fell, broken only by the snuffling noises Tam made in her sleep. Then Robbie breathed.

“Good God, Maidred.”

“I—I know. I must look a fright.” She attempted to smile for his sake, picking bits of straw from her hair. “But it has not been so bad. I just pretend that I am a princess who has to don a disguise for now lest—”

“Stop it!”

Maidred broke off, startled by the harshness of his voice. He seized her by the shoulders, his fingers gouging her skin.

“Will you be at it, even now, spinning your ridiculous fantasies? What does it matter a damn how you look, you little fool?” He gave her a rough shake. “You are going to die today. Don’t you understand that?”

“Y-yes, but it is not kind of you to remind me.” She glanced up at him and saw that his angry outburst was fueled by an anguish he could barely suppress. His eyes welled with tears.

He pulled her close, hugging her so hard she thought he’d crack her ribs. She flung her arms about his neck, holding him as tight, just like they had done when they had been mere babes, frightened by a violent storm beating at the nursery windows. But this time there would be no wakening to a calmer, sunny morning.

Robbie’s doublet smelled of the wide outdoors, sweet meadows and lake breezes, the kind of freedom she would never know again. Maidred whispered, “I am sorry, Robbie. So sorry.”

He peeled her away from him, his eyes less angry than pained and confused. “I still don’t understand, May. That day when you admitted to taking part in the witches’ Sabbath, practicing evil spells against the king, I couldn’t believe it. I thought they must have tortured you to make you confess.”

“No, I was guilty.”

“But why? Why would you do such a thing?”

Maidred spread her hands in a helpless gesture as she sought for words. Once, she and Robbie had been so close there was no need for any explanations. They had shared the same thoughts, the same feelings, and the same imaginings.

But Robbie had long ago abandoned their kingdom of dreams for the harsh wilderness of the real world. He had never been the same since their father had died four years ago.

Thomas Brody had been a wool merchant, prosperous enough to have ambitious hopes for his family, good marriages for his four daughters, a gentleman’s education for his son so that Robert might even aspire to a position at court one day, despite Thomas Brody’s Catholic leanings. The kirk had outlawed the old religion, but the young king James was known to be more tolerant, turning a blind eye to the religious practices of his favorites.