Suzanne Robinson (6 page)

“Er, Oriel, my child. Someday, if I am gone, you may find my tomb inscription full of wisdom and aid in matters of great import. The world is a perilous place.”

“I will remember, Uncle Thomas.”

“By the rood, I know you will.” Thomas turned away from the effigy and began walking. “I’ve never seen a maid with a memory like yours. I do believe you could memorize the entire Bible. In Latin and in English.”

Oriel put her hand beneath Thomas’s arm as they
mounted the stairs. “That reminds me,” she said. “Did you know cousin Robert and cousin George have quarreled again? Last night Robert said all the problems of highwaymen and thievery hereabouts were no doubt due to heretics robbing decent Catholic folk. George nearly burst his doublet.”

“Ridiculous. Robert has never recovered from the family’s changing religion. He’s such a stiff, bigoted young colt. I’m sure a good part of the reason he keeps his fat, disguised priest and his mass is to irk poor George. Robert is a lamentable soul.”

Oriel sighed and nodded. “Yes, and if he doesn’t stop his tongue, he’ll attract Her Majesty’s attention. She cares not for meddling with men’s souls and doesn’t inquire into a Catholic’s mass as long as he worships quietly, but Robert has never been quiet, and now he refuses to attend the established church.”

“If old King Harry were alive,” Thomas said, “Robert would find his head on a pike atop London Bridge.”

After returning to the warmth of Thomas’s library, Oriel gathered quill and paper for her catalog of her uncle’s books while he sorted them. Unfortunately, she grew distracted, reading each book she picked up. She was reading a collection of the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt when her uncle woke from a doze by the fire. He snorted and sat up, straightened the cap he wore to keep his balding head warm, and rose. He picked up the book he’d let fall in his sleep and brought it to the growing pile at Oriel’s writing table.

“I’ve remembered me of a thing,” he said. “Your aunts are constantly at George about your marriage. They say it’s a disgrace to the family that you’re twenty and unmarried, and you should have been a wife seven years ago. What say you to this Hugh fellow?”

Oriel snapped her book closed. “Uncle, he’s a pitiful creature. Why, they hardly taught him his letters in the Tower, and he never learned of hawking or hunting or
dancing or even fencing. He feels unmanned. Poor Hugh.”

“No match for you, my girl. You need a man who won’t get himself lost in the maze of your wit, and one who can protect you. Robert was right, you know. The roads are dangerous, crawling with vermin of all sorts. And what if there’s rebellion? Our cloth-headed Catholic neighbors might take issue with the queen over religion. Too bad that young Blade, er, Nicholas Fitzstephen, offended you. I’ve heard his sword could slice a fairy’s wing, and he’s set all the queen’s maids sighing on his visits to court.”

“He’s mean.”

“Now, child, I thought you’d come to understand his discourtesy. If I had a father who beat me for laughing aloud or for falling off my pony when I was nine, I’d do more than give him barbs and threats. I remember hearing years ago that Andrew Fitzstephen near killed the boy with his whip. That was after he’d done the same for the mother and the boy tried to stop him.”

“I know, I know, I know.” Oriel pressed her palms to her ears. “Don’t speak of it, I pray you. Such talk makes me long to steal into Fitzstephen’s castle and put acid in his ale.”

“Then you forgive the boy.”

“Marry, Uncle, what choice have I? But I still remember what he said.”

Oriel rose and stood in front of a window. She bent her knees and ducked until she caught her reflection in a pane.

“He was right. My face is so pointed I look like a weasel—no, a ferret.” She stuck her tongue out at her reflection.

“A hedgehog, perchance?”

Oriel turned and grinned at her uncle. “Or a dolphin.”

“A squirrel.”

“A rich squirrel,” Oriel said. She sat down in the
window seat and put her chin in her hand. “So I’m to be hounded into marriage.”

“Hounded apace, may a pox take your aunts.”

“Then you must come to my aid. Bethink yourself of all the men I could marry, and I will make a list as well. I will be the one to choose my husband, not them.”

“The choice belongs to George as your guardian.”

“But George I can bend to my way of thinking.” Oriel rose and approached Thomas. She whispered in his ear. “And hark you, if he listens to Aunt Livia or Aunt Faith, I shall run away with the man I choose.”

“Only if you’re able to remember his name, child. Only if you remember his name.”

Blade cursed and threw his goblet at the chimneypiece. The crystal shattered against the stone, and wine splashed, making a carved column appear to bleed.

“The queen’s gone mad.”

Christian de Rivers, who had been standing near the fire, gave his mantel a rueful glance, but otherwise maintained his somnolent pose. “Why say you so?”

“Don’t pretend ignorance. No doubt this is your contriving, this idea to send Matthew Stewart to Scotland. What care you if he’s married to old King Henry’s niece, whose son is a Catholic and has a claim to the throne? Margaret Lennox has plotted her whole life to claim England, and Matthew is as dangerous.”

Blade paused to glare at Christian. They had been
sharing a rare moment of repose, for soon Blade would leave London, and each time they parted, neither could be sure of seeing the other alive again. Tempestuous as their friendship was, Blade was grateful to Christian for rescuing him from the highwayman Jack Midnight.

Eight years ago the thief and his band had fallen upon Blade’s traveling party on their way to deliver their young master to university. In the skirmish, Blade had suffered a wound to the head and awakened with no memory of who he was. Midnight, a dispossessed farmer turned outlaw, carried a deep-seated hatred of the nobility. He’d turned this hatred into a quest for vengeance against any hapless aristocrat who fell in his path. Thus he’d abducted Christian as a child and trained him in thievery, only to lose him. By an unhappy chance, he found a replacement in Blade, a better one, for with no memory, Blade had believed Midnight’s claim that he belonged to the band of highwaymen.

Looking back, he’d decided that his previous misery had contributed to his loss of memory. Rough as Midnight had been, serving him had been preferable to succumbing to the lust to kill his own father. Besides, the life of a highwayman allowed him to drink deep of the wine of recklessness and freedom. Christian had felt the same.

From Midnight they had both learned the lawless arts. Christian had been rescued by his father, the Earl of Vasterne. A later encounter with Jack Midnight brought Christian face-to-face with Blade. In spite of Blade’s fury at being plucked from the dubious comfort of Midnight’s band, Christian forced him to take up residence at the earl’s palace while he ferreted out Blade’s true identity.

At the moment they had returned to the de Rivers mansion on the Strand, for Christian’s inquiries into the matter of Anne Boleyn’s betrothal to Henry Percy had come to an end. He had also consulted with Elizabeth’s
chief minister, William Cecil, who had reacted with alarm at Blade’s news.

Having to wait idle for over a fortnight had given Blade the temper of a starving boar. His fear of encountering the French ambassador had kept him from court and from the company of his friends, except for those of low degree who would not frequent the court or mansions of ambassadors. His carefully tended reputation as a dissolute would protect him from suspicion of intrigue, but he would rather few knew of his presence in England for the moment.

As time passed, he grew more and more apprehensive, for he knew the Cardinal of Lorraine. His network of agents was extensive in London, and whatever Christian discovered, the French minister would as well. The specter of civil war loomed large in his mind. He’d seen the results in the horror of the auto-da-fé, where Lorraine and his allies had publicly burned scores of French Protestants, even children. The thought that the cardinal might acquire the power to perform the auto-da-fé in his beloved England tortured him. He knew Christian felt the same, which made this latest action by the queen seem so foolish. To allow so dangerous a rival as Matthew Stewart to prance off to Scotland to consort with that country’s Catholic ruler seemed the trick of a witless fool.

Christian was no fool. Blade drew his brows together and studied his friend. “What foul scheme have you hatched with our glorious Queen Elizabeth?”

“I’ve hatched nothing. I’m not a chicken.”

“No, you’re a villainous, intriguing, deceitful serpent.” Blade slumped back in his chair and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “And having learned my trade at your side, I begin to think there’s a plot afoot. Knowing Her Majesty, the true intent is buried well below the headstones I see popping up at my feet.”

When Christian remained silent, Blade smiled nastily
and continued. “So,” he breathed. “Let me think. The son of Matthew Stewart and his Tudor wife is Henry, Lord Darnley, in whose veins flows the blood of both Tudors and Stewarts. But if I remember me well, our friend the Cardinal of Lorraine called Lord Darnley
‘un gentil huteaudeau’
—an agreeable nincompoop.”

Christian left the fireplace and came to stand before Blade with the table between them.

“I’ve tutored you well, comfit.”

“Since the Queen of Scots is determined to wed, unlike our own virginal majesty, it would be far more agreeable to her for her cousin to marry an agreeable fool than a disagreeably clever man.”

“And now that you’ve discovered me of my deepest secrets, mayhap you’ll close your mouth so that I may give you news of the witness to Anne Boleyn’s betrothal.”

“A dangerous gamble, Darnley is.”

“Made more perilous by the interference of the Cardinal of Lorraine at this most delicate time. Which is why you must go to this witness and prize from him the truth of the betrothal.” Christian straightened and folded his arms over his chest. “You have an instinct for peril, marchpane. I thank God you recognized the significance of your news and came to me quickly.”

“It’s as I thought, then. The cardinal seeks to destroy Elizabeth’s claim to the throne by finding proof of this prior betrothal and consummation.”

“And the only witness left alive was a lifelong friend of Henry Percy—Sir Thomas Richmond.”

Years at the French court had given Blade the facility to hide his reactions. He lowered his eyes and traced a scratch on the surface of the table with his fingers.

“Sir Thomas Richmond,” he said. “There are no others?”

“No, they’re all dead and have left no written word on the matter. If the cardinal wants proof of a consummation
of vows, he’ll have to get it from Sir Thomas, but you’re going to get it first, preferably by stealth, so that no one will know what you’ve done.”

“Christian.”

Christian swept around the table and put his hand on Blade’s shoulder. “A happy chance that it was you who discovered the danger, for I can send you to Richmond Hall. I’ve already bethought me of a plan. There is an heiress at the Hall, one the Richmonds are seeking to marry to a highborn suitor. You, my comfit, will be that suitor.”

“Christian.”

His friend pounded him on the shoulder and laughed. “Think you I haven’t heard the talk about you at the French court? The queen mother employs her maids in waiting as seductive spies so successfully that they’re called the Flying Squadron for their flying skirts. I shall employ you in like manner.”

“God rot your twisty mind, Christian de Rivers.” Blade threw off his friend’s hand. “You delight in circuitous maneuvers, and this is a good one, except for a small impediment.”

“What impediment?”

“Not long ago I insulted this heiress of Richmond Hall so grievously that she’s bound to puke at the sight of me.”

Blade thrust himself out of his chair and faced Christian. Once, the fury he beheld would have given him pause. Now he merely lifted one brow.