Maid of Secrets (35 page)

“I overheard him talking to de Feria about you, clearly
smitten. The Spanish ambassador looked like he’d eaten lye, to hear your praises sung so charmingly. Had he not been forced into marriage so quickly, ’tis no doubt that he’d also be pressing his own suit for you, Your Grace.”

What were these women talking about? De Feria would sooner spit on the Queen’s slipper than kiss it—surely she knew that? But her answering laughter was light and unconcerned.

“Think you so?” The Queen laughed in return. “That would be a treat.”

Oh, yes, they all concurred, and I was aghast at their flattering lies. There would be no way of telling truth from twaddle with these women. I dearly hoped the Queen did not rely on their accounts.

And in that moment I felt her staring at me, so I ducked again and turned away, this time busying myself at the fire. Did no one tell her the truth even in her own bedchamber? Could she trust no one at all?

I had no sense of time passing, bustling about as we were. The Queen’s laughter flowed easily, and she seemed young and free and curiously excited, particularly as she donned a shimmering white gown, apparently something new. The ladies all exclaimed over her beauty, but my heart plummeted when I saw the gown in all its glory.

Why was she dressing up to go to bed?

They brushed the Queen’s long hair and powdered her skin, detailing its perfection all the while, and the result at length was a monarch worthy of retiring, her bright new bedding gown setting off her porcelain complexion and reflecting brilliantly against her lush red hair.

I felt dread surge anew. Again, what woman dressed so carefully for bed, when she had to rise early the next morning for a royal hunt?

A chambermaid knocked, and the Queen whirled, bidding her to enter. The young girl crossed the threshold with a tray of seven goblets and a carafe of wine. One of the goblets, the largest, had already been filled.

“But come! We must toast another successful masque,” the Queen said gaily, and the women clapped their hands in conspiratorial laughter. I suddenly felt like I was surrounded by children. Was all of this forced jollity an act? Or were they really this . . . carefree?

The servant departed, and we assembled around the drinks table, with me still hanging toward the back of our small retinue. The Queen did the pouring, despite our protestations. Then she lifted her own goblet.

I tensed, even as I obediently picked up my own goblet, staring at the deep red liquid within. The Queen’s cup was distinctively different from our own, encrusted with jewels fit for her royal hand. The Queen’s cup had also been previously filled with wine, while ours had been filled just now from a separate carafe.

We were going to be drugged.

I knew it as surely as I was standing there. Six ladies. Six empty cups. The Queen’s wine in a separate goblet, ours poured later, by her own hand. Who in the kitchens had done the deed? And how much had they drugged the wine? I pried a kerchief out of my sleeve and edged behind the women. I needed time!

“Your Grace, you look so lovely!” cooed the woman in
front of me. Compliments immediately followed all around, giving me an unexpected opening. I turned slightly away, shoving my kerchief into my cup. The wine stained the linen like a crimson sickness, and I’d barely yanked the cloth out again before the Queen raised her goblet.

“To a successful masque!” the Queen cried out, and upended her cup. We all drained our cups, and I once again felt her eyes upon me, fever-bright. Despite my care I was still forced to swallow some of the wine, which tasted curiously sweet to my now trained palate.

The chatter between the ladies grew merrier, their voices too loud, almost jarring to my ears. We scurried around the Queen in our carefully orchestrated dance, but at my first opportunity I drifted over to the hearth to stoke the fire with a poking rod. In one swift movement, I dropped the wine-soaked cloth among the embers and watched it catch fire. No one noticed the sudden flare.

And then the Queen was in her bed with the curtains drawn and the rest of us retired to our sleeping mats, to give our monarch the illusion of privacy without risking her safety for a moment. It was, I thought as I laid myself down and willed myself to defeat the drowsiness clawing at my eyelids, a masterful game.

One by one my fellow ladies of the bedchamber fell asleep, emitting five sets of light snores. Only five, thank heavens, because I was still awake, though it was a close thing. Even with the very little amount of the sleeping draught that I’d ingested, I had to fight sleep off as though it were a smothering bear.

For her part, the Queen did not sleep either. She tossed
and turned in her bed, then became unnaturally silent, with the stillness of a crouching cat. And not two hours after we’d all said our good nights, I heard what I had most feared: the swish of bed curtains parting, the pad of careful feet, and finally the scrape of a panel moved aside—the same clicking rasp that I’d heard in Lord Brighton’s house as Jane and I had unhinged the hidden panel in his wall. I kept myself locked in place, every nerve in my body wrapped tight.

The Queen was leaving her own bedchamber.

No, no, a thousand times no!

I peeked over the edge of my blanket, but she was already gone. I waited just a few heartbeats, then slid off my mat, bunching up my bedclothes to make it look like I was still lying fast asleep. I moved quickly across the room to where the panel remained ajar. The Queen had not tried to move it back into place. She’d done this before, I knew immediately. You did not grow lax the first few times that you duped your keepers, only after regular practice.

How many times had the Queen snuck through the castle’s hidden corridors—and how had she learned of them without Cecil knowing as well? She had only been a baby of three when her own mother had been killed, and that had been long years ago. Had Edward told her of these passages—or Mary? Somehow, I doubted either monarch would have trusted their sister with such information. Then who—a servant? A craftsman, come to work on the castle renovation?

There would be time later to puzzle through that. For now, I slipped into the corridor behind the Queen, seeing her candle bob in the distance, which allowed me to follow her with ease.

The riddle of passageways should have confused me, but I’d been this way before. And when the Queen stopped and moved through a doorway set flush against the corridor wall, my deepest fears were realized.

Saint George’s Hall.

I gave the Queen a moment more to move deeper into the room, while I hesitated in the corridor. Then I realized that I might not be the only person using this passageway, and I hastened forward and slipped into the abandoned hall like a ghost.

The Queen’s candle had been extinguished, but I still saw her clearly, far down the hall, heading toward a sea of hanging tapestries bunched against the far wall. I had noticed the tapestries before, but now I saw them for what they were. A room within a room, all hung with ancient cloths and silks. With growing alarm I followed behind, careful not to get too close.

Then, ahead of us, the heavy draperies split wide, and a rough, sensual voice broke through the silence, quickening my heart even as I felt my stomach twist. It was a voice I’d recognize anywhere: the rounded syllables, the sharp inflections, the weight of double meaning in every careless phrase. And other than one gilded with a Spanish accent, it was absolutely the last voice I’d hoped to hear this night.

“My Queen,” Robert Dudley whispered hoarsely.

Whole centuries passed before the curtains parted again, and I had died a hundred times over in my misery. How long had the Queen been in this room? A bare quarter hour? Half the night? There was no way for me to know. Time seemed to have turned around on itself, and even the faint tolling of the tower clock had begun to speak in riddles. Had it just rung two bells—or had I imagined it?

It mattered not, in any case. My heart was now a cold, wretched stone—my stomach so eaten with bile and anxiety that I thought I might never take food again.

What Cecil had feared was true. More than what he feared, in fact. More than he could ever imagine, I suspected, in his wildest, most worried dreams.

The Queen strolled by me close enough for me to touch her, then slipped back into the corridor. Behind her I trailed listlessly, too shocked to think. It seemed to take us far less time to return to the safety of her chambers than it had for us to leave it. As we approached our destination, however, I realized my mistake.

The Queen would return to her bedchamber via the
secret panel. She would go inside. And then she would close the panel behind her, and set its tiny clasp.

Locking me out.

Panicked, I cast about the corridor for a stone, a brick—anything I might use as some sort of distraction. There was nothing. The corridors were empty, as blank as a piece of parchment, and I dared not make too much noise here, lest she turn and catch me out.

I stumbled on the solution with only the greatest of misery.

With trembling fingers, I pulled out my precious set of picklocks. The treasure I had kept from my past, that had proven to be so valuable in my present. A gift from my grandfather. And now my best chance at survival.

No sooner had the Queen navigated the final turn in the corridor and begun making haste toward the entryway to her own chamber, than I made my move. I sidled up behind her, and just as she bent to duck through the opening in the panel, I hurled the picklocks over her head, far down the shadowed corridor. They struck a far wall and fell to the stone floor with a satisfying clatter, shockingly loud in the silence.

The Queen straightened so fast, I could hear the bones in her back crack. She held the candle aloft, the beginning of a sound on her lips. A haughty
Who goes there!
I was sure, or
Present yourself!

Instead she fell still, and I tensed. A smart woman—or a less bold one—would have dashed back into her room and buried herself under the covers. The Queen, however, was the Queen. She had already proven herself audacious. And her actions this night had also proven that her better sense could
be ruled by her emotions, at least in this one area.

She set off down the corridor, after my picklocks. I prayed she would not find them, but there was no time for me to see. As soon as her royal skirts cleared the opening in the corridor, I dashed up to it, flung myself through the hole, and scrambled across the room to where the ladies of the bedchamber lay sleeping off their drugged wine. Though my entire body shook with exertion and excitement, I slid onto my assigned mat and dragged the covers back over me.

A few moments later I heard the Queen enter the room, and my stomach tightened with worry. But nothing jingled in her hands, and I allowed myself the tiniest hope that my picklocks were still there, hidden in the darkness, waiting for me like a faithful friend. The only friend I had left in this place of stone and secrets.

I struggled to maintain measured breathing as the Queen made her way over to our sleeping group. She stood there, and I could feel her presence radiate around her, exhilarated and majestic. Proud.
She had won!
She had succeeded in escaping the clutches of her keepers for a few precious moments, to pursue her private agenda.

Whether she gloated over her ladies or silently thanked us for being so easily fooled, I couldn’t say. But I was about to break in two from the strain of remaining quiet, when the Queen finally turned away and walked over to her own enormous bed, slid in between the covers, and dropped the curtains once more around her, safe in her royal cocoon.

Only then did she allow herself the smallest of sounds—her first in hours, besides the hushed and earnest talk she’d shared with Dudley, a conversation that would remain in
my thoughts for an eternity. Dudley had pressed the Queen hard, suggesting that he might serve her not only as courtier and lover but as king and consort! And Dudley was married! It was an impossible thing, and she had rebuffed his pleas with gentle words that still left the door open wide for his continued suit to flourish. That had been bad enough. But what she expressed now was far, far worse.

It was the tiniest breath of happiness. A soft, wondering sigh. The kind of sigh that captured all of passion’s sweet torment in its brief and fluttering hold, before letting it free once more.

The Queen was not just dallying with the wrong man at the wrong time, I realized, or entertaining a flatterer to ease the burden of her rule.

No. The Queen was deeply, hopelessly, irretrievably
in love.

And I was no longer merely undone . . . .

I was lost.