The Tudor Vendetta Read online

  “But that,” he went on, “is no matter now.” He reclined in his chair, his hand straying again to his snoring dog. “Tell me about you, lad.”

  I had been gone for years but in his usual way, he did not ask for specifics. For a moment, I wondered how much I should reveal. Taking another long draft from my cup—the more I drank, the more the ale’s quality improved—I began to tell him of the events that had transpired since we’d last seen each other, of my refuge with Cecil and how word eventually reached us that the Imperial ambassador had sent men after me, prompting Cecil to dispatch me abroad. Then I faltered, recalling Elizabeth had forbidden any of us to speak of the incident in her chambers.

  Sensing my reluctance, he made a cursory examination of those seated around us before he said, “No one is interested. This lot works the shipyards all day. All they care about is their drink, filling their bellies, and wasting their hard-earned wages on dice and cunny. Griffin’s safer than any hall at court, I can assure you.”

  All of a sudden, I yearned to unburden myself of the pain of my encounter with Kate, if nothing else. When I finally began to speak, my words were awkward, uncertain, as if I sought to make light of it. Once I was done, he gave me a pensive nod.

  “But you still want her. Do not bother to deny it. I may not be much to look at, if I ever was, but I was young once. I know a fool in love when I see him.”

  “My love cannot protect her,” I said. “It didn’t protect Peregrine.”

  He sighed. “You’re like a flagellant. The lad died by accident. You are not to blame.”

  “I should have known!” Hearing the flare in my voice, I had to make myself lower it. “I will not put Kate in any more danger. Ever since I entered Elizabeth’s service, foes have hunted me. Kate’s only hope is for me to put as much distance between us as I can.”

  “Yet she too serves the queen. It seems to me that is danger enough.”

  I started to protest, but he was right, and so I looked away. Shelton leaned toward me, setting his gnarled paw on my knee. “You cannot be responsible for her safety, lad. You can only do the best you can.” He paused. “I may not have been much of a father to you these past years, but I would like to make amends if you let me. And I can see something more is troubling you.”

  My throat knotted. He removed his hand. “I will not force you. You are back and that is enough. We each have our burdens to bear. You’ve managed well enough with yours; another might not have been so willing to sacrifice everything you have.”

  In a low, almost emotionless voice, I told him about the events in the queen’s chamber. “Now, do you understand?” I asked, as he sat silent. “I have barely been back two days and already she came close to death. Yes, I still love her. I think I always will. But I would rather forsake her now than lose her that way.”

  “Aye, I can understand that,” he said. “Though it seems to me that again, this weight you carry is not of your doing. That box was tainted and sent to the queen. You could not have prevented it. Do you have any idea who might be responsible?”

  “I do,” I said, and as he met my gaze, he went still. “No, lad. It is impossible.”

  “Impossible things happen every day. And it has her mark—the quick-acting poison and cryptic message. It’s just like that letter she left in my chamber, the one that killed Peregrine.”

  Shelton reclined in his chair. “What exactly are you saying?”

  “That if I did not know better, I would think Sybilla Darrier has returned from the dead.”

  He whistled through his teeth. “That would indeed be a feat. We both saw her leap willingly from the bridge. It was a hard fall.”

  “Precisely. She did it willingly. What if she planned to jump from the bridge in order to escape because I had discovered her true purpose?” Sybilla was a secret Catholic working for Spain, bent on revenge because Elizabeth’s father, King Henry, executed her father and brothers during the revolt against the closure of the monasteries, the Pilgrimage of Grace. “I have never met a woman so skilled at deceit,” I added, as his frown deepened. “I believed she took her own life to evade capture. But, what if that is only what she wanted me to believe?”

  “Even if it were true, and I’m not saying it is, where has she been hiding all this time?”

  “She … she could have hidden anywhere.” Uncertainty crept into my voice. I realized how ludicrous I must sound, how devoid of reason. Still, I could not dissuade myself. “Her body was never found. If she did plan to survive that fall, she would have had her hiding place arranged in advance.”

  He rubbed his chin, with a troubled sigh. “No, her body was never found—or if it was, I never heard of it and I kept an ear out for any word. Most of those who ply the waters for corpses come here to drink; they would have mentioned finding a woman like her. Countless others have been dragged from the Thames since then, but none I heard about matched her description.” He went quiet for a moment, considering. “Perhaps she was never found because she was dragged under by the current and swept out to sea?”

  “The river was nearly frozen,” I reminded him.

  “Then she was trapped under the ice and when the river thawed, her remains were swept out to sea.” His voice softened. “You cannot chase a shade, lad, not when you have more pressing troubles at hand. Whatever happened to her, whatever evil she caused—it’s over now.”

  I wanted to believe him. I had every reason to. I had seen her plunge from the bridge with my own eyes, her last enigmatic smile on her lips before she leapt. She had looked at me in that final moment as if she had won a victory. Perhaps because she had escaped me, because I would now never know what that smile had meant, I had let her haunt me. It was possible that deep inside me, in that dark place where lust twisted into monstrous shapes, I wanted her to be alive because it meant I would see her again. If so, it only proved my weakness, how much harm I might yet bring upon those around me.

  I said quietly, “I took her to my bed.”

  Shelton started in his chair.

  “I disregarded my promise to Kate,” I went on, “everything I held sacred, because I desired her. I wanted her from the hour I first saw her, among Queen Mary’s women. She was so beautiful—” I paused. “Christ, she was unlike any woman I’d ever seen. Even now, the mere thought of her … She used me. She saw my desire and she honed it as a weapon against me.”

  He went quiet for a moment. Then he said, “You are but a man. How were you to know?”

  “Because it was my duty to know!” To my horror, tears scalded my eyes. I forced them back, summoning the fury I had nourished like an invisible scourge. “I should have known. There were plenty of signs she was untrustworthy, if only I had heeded them. Peregrine’s death alone should have been enough, but it was not. I let my grief for him become so vast, I stepped right into her snare.”

  “You are too hard on yourself. No”—Shelton shook his head, silencing me—“you always were. You always felt you had to prove yourself since you were a foundling in the Dudley household. No matter what those ruffians flung at you—the taunts and dunking in stable troughs, the beatings and black eyes—you fought back. You never let yourself be defeated.”

  “How could I?” I said, stung by this unwelcome reminder of my childhood. “If I’d shown a single instance of weakness, they would have killed me.”

  “Indeed. Yet defeat can take many forms. You succumbed to a woman. God knows, there is not a man alive or dead, I wager, who has not made the same mistake. Nevertheless, you protected Elizabeth, and Kate, too; you helped save the kingdom. Unfortunately, it is most often our mistakes, not our triumphs, that define us. Do not let that happen to you.”

  I did not want to hear it. I evaded his advice, because it made me recognize my morbid attachment to my self-inflicted culpability, a dismal refuge I had built around my heart, so atonement would always be out of reach. Sybilla was dead, but part of her lived in me. I had kept her memory alive to torment myself. I had to forget her if I hoped
to ever find peace.

  “You are wise,” I said at length. “I should not let the past cloud my future. I must focus only on finding out who now seeks harm on the queen.”

  “And you must do it before Dudley finds out you misled him,” added Shelton. “He may have struck a pact with you out of fear you’d reveal his treason, but when he discovers your ploy, he will try again to destroy you. He hankers for revenge.”

  “I know.” I found myself finally smiling. “I do seem to have a talent for riling him up.”

  Shelton chuckled. “I have never known anyone more prone to stepping on his tail.” His mirth faded. “I still have Sybilla’s sword, the one she dropped on the bridge. I had it repaired. It is the finest Toledo steel money can buy. Beyond price. It’s yours, if you want it.”

  I shook my head, reaching for the pitcher. “Keep it. I do not want anything of hers.”

  Two hours and two more pitchers later, I could barely stand. The smoky room swam about me. Looking around through bleary eyes, I realized it was empty, girls sweeping up gristle and ashes from the floor while others clanked dishes in the washing tub behind the hutch. I was too drunk to ride, Nan emphatically informed me.

  “You will sleep here,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “The streets are no place for a law-abiding person at night, what with the riffraff and the curfew in effect.” Turning to Shelton, she said, “He can bed on the settle. Take him now before he falls flat on his face.”

  As Shelton wrapped an arm like a beam of lumber around my waist, guiding me to the narrow staircase, I slurred, “My horse … Cinnabar. I left him with a boy outside…”

  “I’ve already seen to it,” said Nan. “The horse and Tom are stalled out back, with plenty of feed and a brazier to keep them warm. I will check on them again before I close for the night, don’t you fret. Now, go on upstairs. You have no head for ale.”

  “Or much of anything else these days, it seems,” I muttered, but I allowed Shelton to take me up to their small living quarters above the tavern, where I collapsed in a heap on the settle as he pulled off my boots, unlaced my doublet, and divested me of my breeches like a child.

  Slumber overcame me within seconds of him setting a blanket over me. I feared I would dream again of Sybilla, straddling me with a knife in her fist.

  Instead, I saw Elizabeth, a spaniel dying at her feet as she whispered, Do not stray far. I may have need of you.…

  Chapter Eight

  I left the Griffin before dawn with a sour taste in my mouth, an aching head, and repeated assurances to Nan that I would return as soon as I was able. Shelton gave me a hearty embrace and fetched Cinnabar himself. My horse seemed content, and I tossed Tom his extra coins as promised, bringing a cheerful grin to the boy’s grime-stained face.

  The ride to Whitehall was quiet, the city only starting to stir to its usual ear-numbing cacophony. Flurries of snow pirouetted in the icy air; I could see my own breath coming in puffs from my mouth and sensed this winter would be as frigid as the last time I had been in London, when the Thames froze over and children took to it with skates made of bone strapped to their feet.

  Above me, the morning’s brisk exhalation washed the sky clean of its pall of smoke, revealing a patina of crimson and gold flushing the horizon. After presenting my credentials to the yeomen at the gates (ever-efficient Cecil had enclosed a note in my doublet pocket bearing his signature and seal, stating I was in his employ), I stabled Cinnabar and paid the sleepy-eyed groom to brush him down and feed him. I then made my way through the palace to my room, holding my nose and resisting gagging as I passed the reeking jakes. The overcrowding would require a move soon, if only because Elizabeth had a sensitive nose.

  I expected to find Walsingham waiting. Instead, the chamber was empty, his few belongings gone. He must have moved to the house he had said Cecil was renting for him, I thought, wincing at the persistent throb in my temples as I unclasped my cloak. I really should not ever drink ale again. Nan was right: I had no tolerance for it.

  A knock came at the door just as I was splashing water on my face from the ewer on the table, having shed my court garb for my comfortable, worn clothes.

  Cecil stood on the threshold.

  Dark circles under his eyes betrayed an anxious night. The gravity of his expression, too, doused the aftereffects of my indulgence with remarkable efficacy. Looking at him, I felt stone-cold sober. I also found myself bracing for the worst, thinking something terrible had happened while I had been gone.

  “She wants to see you,” he said. “Make haste.”

  We went together into the privy gallery without saying a word. At first, I thought he was angry that I had wandered off after such a calamity, when he might have found need of my assistance, but the terse line of his jaw was not indicative of any particular anger toward me. He would have had no problem venting his spleen if it were. Nevertheless, I could not abide his silence any longer and ventured, “Is something amiss?”

  “I take your meaning to be, is anything else amiss besides the fact that someone tried to poison our queen?”

  “Yes,” I said, resisting a roll of my eyes.

  “Indeed. Well, fortunately for you, it was an uneventful night. She stayed in her rooms, despite ceaseless badgering from the court, which seems to think she must now make appearance every night in the hall, dressed to the teeth with roast at her table, eager to strew her favor.”

  “Have you any indication of who might be the culprit?”

  “We do not. We did question His Excellency de Feria at length and had his rooms searched, rousing his outrage, but we found nothing to indicate he is party to any plot, instigated by his master or otherwise. Of course, these Spaniards always have a few knives up their sleeves, but Walsingham is of mind that in de Feria’s case, his outrage is genuine. The duke swore to lodge a complaint with King Philip himself and take ship for Spain on the next tide, of course, but we reminded him that he requires royal leave. As you can imagine, he is not pleased.”

  “No, I should think not. And the delivery records…?”

  He scowled. “That infernal gift seems to have materialized out of nowhere. I’ve had my assistants devise a new system for tracing everything that arrives for her henceforth, and to detain anyone suspicious, but in the meantime we have no clue as to who brought such an abomination into the palace.” He paused before the doors to the royal apartments, clearing his throat. “I’ve been up all night, poring over every possible route in and out of Whitehall, both official and unofficial. All doors and passages not currently guarded are now closed. I also spoke to the queen’s women at length. All swear on their honor that they know nothing; no one approached them or entrusted them with the box. It’s inconceivable that poison could have made its way into the queen’s very own hands without anyone being the wiser, but there you have it.”

  Now I understood the reason behind his rigidity. Cecil was horrified. Not a month on her throne and already Elizabeth had come within inches of her death. It was an ominous start to what had been an often dangerous rise to power; she was not yet crowned and we faced an unknown opponent who would most likely strike again. Should she succumb, the crown would devolve on her cousin Mary of Scots, to the papist depredations of France abetted by our own scheming Catholics. On Elizabeth’s narrow shoulders now rested England’s entire future. Without her, this realm would be torn apart.

  “Do you know why she asked to see me?” I said, tugging at the edge of my old dark wool doublet. I should not have changed, though it was so early there was no one about to witness an ordinary man in plain fustian, entering the queen’s rooms.

  “I do not.” He motioned the granite-faced guards at her doors aside. “I assume she has a purpose. She also insisted on speaking to you alone.” He stared at me. He did not need to add that as soon as I learned this purpose, he expected me to report it to him.

  The watching chamber was deserted. I paused, discomfited by the absence of servants. I knew Elizabeth valu
ed her solitude; during our short time together at Hatfield, she had often taken to the gallery to read or walk on her own. All of us who lived with her had sensed how much she needed her time, that a mind such as hers, so nimble yet elusive, so keen, required privacy. Nevertheless, whenever she had asked to see me alone it had been for a reason, and I suspected that I was now about to discover why she had summoned me from Basel to attend her.

  A dog’s whine turned me about. “I am here,” she said, her voice issuing as if out of thin air. Looking toward the far window, I saw her draped in shadow, Urian resting at her feet, silhouetted against the wine-dark folds of her robe. As I started to bow, she held up a hand. “There is no need for ceremony, as you can see. We are alone.”

  As she stepped forth, I noted her marked pallor, her skin stretched so taut over the angular bones of her face it seemed almost translucent, a blue vein traceable in her brow. Her hair hung loose, her slim waist cinched by the jeweled clasp of her garment. Her sleeves, unstiffened and full, hung like velvet wings to her exquisite hands; other than her royal ring, she wore no jewels. She murmured to the dog and Urian bounded to me, shoving his sleek head into my hand. I ruffled his ears.

  “Are you well?” she asked.

  “Yes, my lady, as well as can be expected under the circumstances. And you…?”

  She blew out a frustrated breath. “I am not ill with worry, if that’s what they think.”

  “I do not think it,” I replied.

  “No? Cecil thinks I should be, as does that brooding Moor of his, Walsingham, who cut up my spaniel. Had they their way, I’d be rushing about in a panic, ordering departure for Windsor or, better yet, the Tower, where I can lock myself behind stout walls like a prisoner and refuse to see anyone until that madman, whoever he is, is drawn and quartered.”