Maid of Secrets (19 page)

I looked from her to the sheeting rain outside. We could barely see three feet in front of our faces. “I don’t think that will be an issue.”

“What are these things?” Jane lifted the garments in her hands. “Cloaks?”

“Not just any cloaks.” Anna beamed. “I got the idea when they herded all of the sheep into the lower halls after the first great storm broke. They weren’t wet.”

Jane frowned at her. “Of course they were wet. They’re the wettest, smelliest sheep I’ve ever been unfortunate enough to call my neighbors.”

Anna shook her head. “Their
wool
was wet, but not their skin,” she said. “I got the idea that if I could curry the lanolin from their skin and apply it to the proper cloth, we’d have waterproof cloaks—lighter than leather and cheaper besides, easier to pack and clean. I’ve tried a few different formulas, working with different tonics, and, well—here we are.”

We stared at her, then back at the cloaks. “You have been experimenting with sheep sweat?” Jane asked.

“And it works?” I chimed in after.

Anna shook out a cloak and held it up high. “You want to wait here, or go out and see for yourselves?”

She didn’t have to ask us twice. As one we donned the cloaks and lashed them to our bodies. They were lightweight, as Anna had promised, and only a little bit stiff. But the moment we ventured out into the Upper Ward, we gasped. Water bounced off the surface of our cloaks as if they were made of iron. “You’re a genius!” Jane shouted from deep within her cowl. “I can’t believe this!”

“Quickly! And keep to the walls!” Anna shouted back.
“We don’t want anyone to look out and catch us actually having fun.”

We ducked and ran flush against the walls, down past the quadrangle and through the Norman Gate. The sodden guards stared at us, bemused, but let us pass when Anna announced our names and claimed we were on an errand for the Queen. Used to Elizabeth’s foibles, they didn’t even blink, and if they noticed our miraculous cloaks, they were themselves too wet to care.

We ran around the Round Tower, and I felt my feet yearn to take flight, the whole of the Lower Ward yet to be explored. But beside us in the rain, Anna skidded to a stop, and Jane crashed into her. “What!” Jane groused, bouncing back. “What is it?”

“Look!” Anna pointed up to the rim of the Round Tower, and we squinted in the rain.

The heavily painted English roses were long gone, the cheap paints that had been used to craft them no match for the days upon days of downpour. But a closer look revealed what those heavy images had left behind.

There, etched into the stone, where one of the roses had been, was a symbol I had never seen before. An inverted triangle surmounting a cross. It was small, no more than a hand span in height, and looked like it had been pounded into the rock quickly. It was neither deep nor well defined. But it was definitely there. “Here’s another one!” Jane announced, another quarter turn around the tower. We darted back through the Norman Gate and around the far side of the tower, and found four of the symbols in all—four symbols hidden behind what had been nearly two dozen painted English roses.

“Are they religious marks?” I asked as Anna stared hard at the symbol, committing it to memory.

“Possibly. The cross makes sense for that, but not the triangle. Either way, they do not serve the crown of England.” She shook her head. “We’ll need to tell the Queen. And Cecil.” She peered through the pouring rain, her face upturned and surprisingly pretty beneath the cowl of her own creation. “They’ll want these carvings gone before the rain lifts, whatever they are.”

“You have the right of that.”

We turned and fled into the castle, shedding our cloaks as we went. We agreed by common consent that Anna would get the role of telling the Queen, and Cecil after. Jane might have been the most ruthless of us, and I might have had the lightest touch . . . but Anna had seen these carvings in a driving rainstorm and had immediately recognized them as a potential problem. One day, I had no doubt, her sharp mind and quick wits would save us all.

The rain fell for fully six more hours, and by the time the sun peeked out at last and we ventured back outside, the work on the Round Tower was complete. Nothing remained of the four strange symbols cut into the stone. Instead Elizabeth’s own shields had been carved over them, looking as if they had always rested there, high upon the walls.

Night fell hard that same evening, the moon partially hidden behind a drifting fog. By midnight the castle would be as dark as a shroud. It was barely ten o’clock, but we were all fast abed.

Good little spies that we were.

I sat up on my sleeping mat. Jane sat up on hers. Both of our gazes turned to the tinkling sound of bells as they shivered in a light fall of water that rained down from an intricate series of tilted flagons set up on a ledge between us. Over the past few weeks we’d observed the length of time that various flagons full of water took to drip out enough water to send it cascading downward over the string of bells, making a sound only discernible to us, as we slept closest to the apparatus. This eve we’d carefully set the musical timepiece with specific deliberation, and it had worked perfectly. “We go now?” Jane whispered.

I nodded. With the skies finally clear the ladies-in-waiting were to practice their night-goddess dance for the upcoming masque on the cobbled stones of the Queen’s Privy Garden this night, so we’d have easily an hour to search. “Just one thing.” I moved over to our community chest and opened it as quietly as I could. Rooting around beneath the dozens of wraps and boxes and packets of possessions that we each stored there, I finally found what I was seeking. I pulled out the waxed cloth packet and undid the intricate knotwork while Jane watched. She chuckled softly as she saw what the package held.

“Picklocks?” she asked. “Why didn’t you bring these out when we covered that section in class? Those look better than anything they gave us to practice on.”

“Because I wanted to learn on an inferior set.” I held the picklocks up to the window, the thin shaft of moonlight making them seem like otherworldly creatures, at once delicate and strong. “My grandfather gave them to me, right before he died. Why, I’ll never know.” I shook my head. “We didn’t have much occasion to pick locks on the stage.”

Jane reached out and touched the tools almost reverently. “Maybe he knew you’d end up here?” Then her gaze dropped to the remaining item in the packet. “What’s in the book?”

“Nothing,” I said curtly. I slid the picklocks into my waistband and wrapped the cloth packet with the book up tightly, then picked up the binding strings. I didn’t expect my paltry belongings would have excited the curiosity of the other maids in our small troupe, but I had nothing else that was mine alone. I reset the lock knot carefully.

“Anna could read it for you, you know,” Jane said, and I tensed for a moment before shoving the wrapped book back into the chest.

“I know,” I muttered. “But I want to read it myself.” My grandfather’s book remained an enigma to me. Ostensibly a book of verse, its words had yet to make any sense, despite my improving skill with the English language. I’d decided to stop looking at it until I could read an ordinary book straight through, but even though I’d achieved that feat, I still couldn’t understand the little leather tome. It was infuriating.

We made our way to the sleeping chambers of the ladies-in-waiting. Luckily, there were no guards at their door. I’d been worried about this but had considered it a risk worth taking, since the room would be empty and the women doubtlessly needed protection from every available guard while they practiced in the garden.
The doors are locked,
they would have assured the guards.
Attend to
us
instead.
I shook my head. Locked doors made people lax.

Jane’s laughter was soft as I put my left hand on the door, fishing for my picklocks with my right. They slid easily into
my hand, as if coming home. “No one would believe you are using those for the first time,” she said.

“As long as they get us where we want to go,” I whispered back, working the delicate tools into the lock. The door gave far more easily than it should have, and I whistled low. “I don’t think this lock would offer much resistance to anyone determined to get in.”

Jane snorted. “I’m sure there have been many occasions for ladies-in-waiting needing to get in and out of their chambers with ease. There must be a passage out of here behind one of the panels in their chamber as well.”

“You think?”

“Has to be. I’m surprised we haven’t found one in ours. I’d wager the other chambers are riddled with them.”

I thought about that as we slipped into the room, appreciating the warm fire burning low in the grate. Would the Queen know all of the passages within the castle? Could she find privacy anywhere within the very walls of Windsor?

“What are we looking for?” Jane’s words were loud against my ear, causing me to jump.

“Lady Amelia’s wardrobe. Particularly the dress she wore that day in the garden, or at least the skirts. She probably has a pocket sewn into them.” The day clothes of the ladies-in-waiting were not dissimilar to our own—laced together in separate pieces to increase the number of times we could wear the outfit between washings. Amelia’s soft green skirts would have been hung up and out of harm’s way as soon as she’d returned from walking in attendance on the Queen in the gardens.

We found the garment easily, but a quick search of the pleats and hems therein was fruitless. So were our efforts to
rummage through her collection of pouches, which would generally have been attached to a chain or sash around Amelia’s waist. None of them contained any letters.

I stood, my head cocked. “Where would a woman hide a letter if not in her skirts or pouches?” Privacy was a virtually nonexistent luxury in the communal quarters we shared.

“Under her wig?”

I goggled at Jane. “Lady Amelia wears a wig?”

Jane shrugged. “She’s not the only one. Her hair is as fine as corn silk and can’t bear the torture of the braiding and stiffening.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“I am.” She grinned at me. “I wore a wig, when I first came here.”

“Whyever for?” I asked. “Your hair looks perfectly suitable as it is!”

“Well, now it is, yes.” She bobbed her head. “But when I arrived, I’d shorn it close and tight. I looked more like a boy than a girl, they told me, so Cecil commissioned a wig to match my own hair—but appropriately long. I still have it,” she said. “But Amelia wouldn’t need her wig tonight. They’re going to dress in cowls and long robes if they’re practicing for the masque. No one will even see her hair.”

I looked around the room, momentarily at a loss. The fire burned low in the grate, casting flickering shadows. Then my gaze lifted, and I saw what I was searching for, upon the high boarded chest. An elegantly poufed shock of white-blond hair.

“It doesn’t look quite right, not sitting on a head,” I said, and Jane followed my gaze.

“It doesn’t look quite right even when it
is
on her head,”
she said. We dragged a stool over, and I stepped up on it, easily reaching the wig. I poked my hand underneath.

Nothing.

“This is beginning to annoy me,” I said. “Lady Amelia isn’t that smart!”

“And mayhap neither are we,” Jane agreed, equally disgusted.

Time was now growing short. We rummaged through the interior of the boarded chests, and looked under the beds, through the sheets. We found two small coffers, of which my picklocks made short work. We spread their contents out on the hearth, careful to keep the two boxes separate. One was filled almost to overflowing with scraps of silk, broken bits of jewelry, and shillings. Jane frowned, looking at it, then looked at the box as well. “This could be the right box, you know. The lady who owns it is a bit of a scavenger.”

I glanced at it, seeing it in a new light. “No,” I said resolutely. “She may be a scavenger, but she is a poor one. Lady Amelia has a fine wig; I don’t think that was purchased by the Queen’s allowance.” I lifted the gold-inlaid chest I held. “If either of the boxes belongs to her, it’s this one.” I frowned at it in my hands, testing its weight. Something didn’t make sense. “There’s a false bottom here.”

Jane leaned close, and together we carefully pried up the thin wooden base of the box.

Beneath it was a packet of neatly folded letters, lovingly bound in a strip of lavender cloth. I pulled out the top one, the bold slashing script evoking a sense of passion and urgency. “This one’s written in Spanish,” I said. “These are the letters!”

“Who are they from?”

I peered at the letter in scant light. “Somebody named Dona Victoria. No last name.”

Jane pulled one of the letters from the packet. “The tone of this one is familiar, like a friend or a cousin.” She shook her head. “This one isn’t even to Lady Amelia; it’s to her cousin.”

“And this one—to an aunt maybe?” I held it up.

Jane took the next. “And to Lady Knollys.”

I froze. “Lady Knollys?” Why was a lady of the bedchamber receiving letters from Spain? “It’s much like the others?”