Maid of Secrets (5 page)

Gloriana, her most high majesty Queen Elizabeth Regnant, stood magnificently in her private garden, surrounded by her attendants like stars around the sun.

She was spectacular in the morning light—tall and fair and flame-haired, her strength and vitality positively glowing beneath the deep red satin gown she wore. The dress framed her graceful neck and shoulders in a square-cut collar edged in snowy lace, and its wide-set sleeves were strung with pearls and ended in narrow, bejeweled cuffs. The entire gown was embroidered with heavy golden thread against its crimson silk, and must have weighed four stones. It would have overpowered most women, but not our Elizabeth. With every movement the Queen commanded the eye; each word from her lips pricked the ears and sent a shiver down the skin; each glance could send a heart aflutter or a stomach plunging in fear.

Her face could not be called pretty, exactly, though she was favorable to look upon, with high cheekbones, flashing green eyes, and a firm jaw. But she possessed a hardness, a power in her very bones that transcended feminine beauty.
Even at a mere twenty-five years of age, she was both King and Queen in one resplendent form.

She’d saved me from prison, when Cecil had wanted me banished. And now she would give me the means to achieve my freedom.

My first assignment!
Nimbly my mind jumped ahead days, weeks—months even—directing a play as yet not fully cast. If I carried out my charge well, what would the next assignment be? How soon would I complete my service and be allowed to return to my troupe?

Leading the way with his usual brisk stride, Cecil barreled through the garden like a bull among chickens, scattering the squawking women as he led us toward the Queen. Behind him, I exchanged glances with Beatrice and Anna. Even in the Queen’s private garden, we knew what we had to do. We’d been trained to watch and report.

With an artful turn of her head, Beatrice began scanning the women arranged around the Queen. She was more than just a flirt, no matter my disdain for her. She had memorized a complicated map of the current alliances among the nobility, both temporary and entrenched, and she was ever adjusting that map according to the shifting tides of favor that seemed to rock the court. She knew more about how the women of the court ranked, whether by birth or by subtle court power exchanges, than they probably knew themselves, and she narrowed her eyes slightly as she watched, concentrating on two ladies at the far end of the garden who apparently should not have been standing together.

Anna, for her part, was to provide a simple accounting: who was there and who was not, from monarch to maid to
serving girl, complete with names and what they were wearing or carrying. This work was not as intriguing to her as deciphering codes or playing with astrolabes or translating ancient Greek, but Anna enjoyed the game of numbers and descriptions very much. Even now, her cheeks flushed with excitement as her gaze discreetly swept the small space.

My role, in turn, was to learn the unspoken secrets of the players around me, simply by observing how they conducted themselves upon this royal stage. I noted who was leaning into intimate conversation, and who was being rebuffed. Who had curiosity or anger or delight or dismay writ upon their faces, and who was watching whom. After three months of this constant assignment, I could no longer enter a knot of people without systematically tracking the cues they gave, which announced their intentions before they ever opened their mouths.

Still, my stomach tightened as we approached the Queen. I didn’t know what to expect from her, and I didn’t like surprises. Surprises required improvisation. Improvisation worked far better in a play than in real life—and even then, only with the most skilled of actors. Would I be convincing enough to carry the day, if my assignment proved to be beyond my skills? I put on a smile of confidence like a mask, and made ready to say yes to anything.

Seated beside Queen Elizabeth were three ladies-in-waiting, who in turn were attended by the youngest member of our special group of maids, Sophia Dee.

Yes,
that
Sophia—whose touch had been my undoing, three months ago in the marketplace.

Orphaned when she was very young, Sophia was both
ward and niece to the Queen’s astrologist, John Dee, and the dark-haired, violet-eyed girl was believed to
almost
possess the Sight. It was beyond ironic to me. A hundred years ago—or even more recently, in truth—an ability to foresee the future might have gotten Sophia burned at the stake. But here, with this Queen and in this court, the idea that she might serve the Queen in much the same way John Dee did had made Sophia a commodity of highest value. And her gift was going to manifest itself with clarity
any day
now, everyone was certain.

I, for one, suspected it already had. Cecil had forced Sophia to stand in my path that day in April, to confirm his suspicion that I was the thief that he sought—and with her touch she’d condemned me. I’d forgiven her for her part in taking me down, but only because she was so distraught for days after, swearing she did not know
why
I’d filled her with such fear, or
how
exactly she’d known of my crimes. Sophia had mentioned a dream to me that day in the marketplace, but when I’d asked her about it later, she’d said I’d misheard her. This of course was impossible—I misheard no one. But at the girl’s obvious distress, I didn’t press the point. Perhaps she didn’t trust her dreams as yet; perhaps all of her dreams weren’t accurate. Or perhaps she was simply scared. I know I would have been. It could not be easy to see the future, especially if it came true.

We’d talked more since that day, and I quickly realized that Sophia felt a certain kinship to me. Not because of our backgrounds, since Sophia had been born to wealth and had never roamed the streets and countryside as part of a laughing crowd. But simply because I was the new member, the slow learner, the sharpening stone on which the other girls
honed their wits. Before, that role had been hers. I did not quibble with Sophia’s camaraderie, though. I was glad to call anyone an ally. I thought of her as “the Seer.”

Now, as Sophia sat quietly beside the Queen, her quiet blue gown of stiffened lace doing nothing to dim her ethereal beauty, her role was to watch the space between the spaces around the women gathered here, in case their spirits spoke to her or she was given some clue as to their future actions. It was a fruitless chore, in truth. Sooner or later, I felt in my bones, Sophia would gain real command over her sight. And then she would truly shine.

Hopefully, it would be sooner rather than later. The poor girl was already
betrothed
, and to an old man at that! I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. Invariably, when I’d played the role of the wife of an older man as part of my “acting” duties within the Golden Rose, it had called for sarcasm, anger, and a surfeit of grief. From everything I could tell, in observing both the members of our own troupe and the lives of the villagers and farm people who made up our crowds, marriage was the lot all women hoped for . . . until they found themselves enmeshed in it. Yes, of course there were exceptions, but they were precious few. For most women, marriage was like a yoke hewn from a sturdy beam, something to be endured for the security it provided. But my aim in life was freedom, not endless servitude; joy, not misery. There would be no husband for me.

That left only one member of our small band of five maids a-spying who was unaccounted for this morning: Jane Morgan, the Blade.

The most secretive spy among us, Jane was probably
hiding not ten feet away, watching us all. She had a knack for that sort of thing, as well I knew. Invariably her role, no matter the setting, was to be ready to kill someone—or at least horribly maim them. She could recognize the tensing of a body, the stealth of a step, the shift of the eyes. An attack on the Queen was not a likely concern when she was surrounded by women in her own Privy Garden, but Jane never knew when she’d be called upon to act. Especially in a castle as full of mayhem as Windsor.

In the short time I’d been here, there’d been no fewer than a dozen odd court disturbances, from the theft of the ladies’ precious gowns—later found floating in the Thames—to the string of English roses painted around the rim of the Round Tower, to the enormous wharf rats that had been released into the kitchens, setting the entire staff of cooks and servants into a screaming fury. The Queen and her court were irritated, and all of Windsor was abuzz with the outrage of it all.

Cecil halted in front of me with a brief bow to the Queen, and I forced my attention back to my royal obligations. In unison, Beatrice, Anna, and I curtsied deeply to Her Majesty, then stood straight. Each of us, if asked, had already observed enough in this small garden space to give a full report.

Sadly, in all the time I’d been in the Crown’s employ, nobody had asked.

Perhaps now that would finally change.

Queen Elizabeth eyed us with approval. Given that Her Grace’s gown was studded with jewels along both sleeves, it was plain she had not dressed merely for her ladies this
morning. She must have just left her enormous Presence Chamber, where she routinely heard her subjects’ requests, resolving everything from village conflicts to tax relief to marital negotiations for the most minor of nobility. Having lived with the Golden Rose the whole of my life, I’d never realized how much a monarch could govern the daily lives of her more dignified subjects.

Now this monarch turned to Cecil, fully ready to govern mine.

“Good morrow, Sir William,” Queen Elizabeth said, her voice filled with proud command, causing everyone in earshot to turn her way abruptly. “I trust your morning lesson has gone well?”

Cecil bowed slightly, his response measured and equally firm. “Very well, Your Grace,” he said. Something passed between them, riding the innocent words, but I could not puzzle it out. “Your maids are ready to serve you.”

The three ladies-in-waiting behind the Queen tried to appear bored but failed miserably. I could sense Beatrice snapping to attention as they eyed us with furtive attention. They wanted desperately, I knew, to gather some idea of why the Queen concerned herself so much with the separate studies of five young maids, but so far they had been unsuccessful in that attempt. According to Cecil, not even the Queen’s closest confidantes were privy to our exact purpose, other than that we were being taught “advanced etiquette, comportment, and grace.” As if we were rather slow and needed extra instruction. Considering the curious backgrounds of most of us, this seemed eminently logic to all, and we were all glad of the covering story. Except Beatrice,
of course, who remained constantly indignant about the perceived slight to her reputation.

Then something moved near the hedgerow, the subtlest shift of shadows, and I hid a smile. Jane Morgan had finally made her appearance known. At least to me.

Dark and fluid in her somber grey shift, sharp-featured but oddly striking, Jane was the grimmest member of our small group of spies in many ways, but she was also the easiest for me to understand. Her skills were straightforward, and exceedingly useful, though to my knowledge they hadn’t yet been put to the test under the Queen’s command.

Jane had been found just after Christmastide, I’d been told, when the Queen’s Guard had been sent to arrest a traveling group of marauders who’d attacked a small hamlet in North Wales.

Jane, whose family had been killed in the attack, had gotten to the marauders first.

“Leave us,” the Queen now said abruptly, interrupting my reverie, and it took me a moment to realize she was commanding her ladies-in-waiting to depart. It took them a moment to realize it as well, which made Beatrice stand particularly straight as the three older women rose to their feet—Kat Ashley, the Queen’s oldest friend, who had the grace to not look annoyed; and Blanche Parry and Lady Knollys, who left no question of their disdain for us.

I watched them go, then glanced back to the Queen, somewhat startled to see that her gaze had fallen on me.

“You have been with us three months, Meg. Sir William tells me you’ve progressed well enough for your first test.”

“Your Grace,” I said, curtsying again under her watchful gaze. I was getting very good at curtsying.

The Queen swept forward, her skirts brushing by my forehead, catching at my hair. Even in the midst of the garden, she smelled of lavender and something else, a sharp but pleasant spice I could not identify. All of the castle was like that, aswirl in pomanders and scents that I encountered at every turn. I had begun working with Anna to sort them out, but I was still a hopeless novice.

“Walk with me,” the Queen commanded, and I popped up so quickly, I felt dizzy, stumbling forward as Beatrice shoved me.

“Go!” Beatrice hissed. “And try not to embarrass us!”

I nodded tightly and hastened after the Queen, who was already several steps ahead.

The Queen set out at a fast pace, and I carefully remained just behind her. We were of a height, which made it easier for me to match her stride, though her heeled slippers made her seem taller. At the far corner of the yard, the Queen still did not look at me, but glanced out across the garden as we turned, never slowing. “So, Meg, tell me,” she said, her words almost casual, but not quite. “What have you learned in your three months of training?”

“Your Grace?” I asked, surprised by the breadth of the question. “Ah, I have learned a great many things.” She did not reply, so I blundered on. “I have learned the family lines of all political houses in England and the rest of Europe. I have learned to dance the Almain, and I have—”

“And what have you learned about your fellow maids?”

I hesitated again.
Where is this going?
“Well, Beatrice’s mother is from the house of Winterton, and is married to the Earl of—”

“Beyond that.” The Queen silenced me with a wave of her ringed fingers. “What is Beatrice’s best ability?”

“Manipulation,” I said, without thinking. Then I rushed to soften the words, lest they seem uncharitable. “She is perfectly placed in the court. Everyone knows her and her standing, and she makes alliances with ease and elegance. She is one of the most sought after young women of the land, though far below you, of course, Your Grace.”