Maid of Secrets (9 page)

She was striding away from a side table, a flagon of wine in her hand, with three leering, hungry-eyed men staring after her.
Oh, no.
The last time Jane had been bothered by the men of the court, she’d practiced her poisoning skills on their fish pies. I eyed the flagon she now held snugly, then looked back at the men quaffing their drinks from newly filled goblets. This would not go well for them, I was sure.

By the time I reached the far end of the hall, de Feria was leaning up against a thick stone column. I crept up alongside it as near to him as I dared. I felt his glance, so I stood on tiptoe as if to watch the dance progress, a young noblewoman at her first ball, eager for love.

De Feria huffed a short, disgusted breath, and I hid my smile. Let him think me a fool. As I watched the dancers, I found my eyes drawn again and again not to Beatrice and Rafe, but to the Spaniard Nicolas Ortiz and Lady Amelia, laughing and intimate in their too-close embrace, the courtier as dark and intense as she was fair and earnest. I blinked. Was Lady Amelia in love as well—and with a Spaniard? Had everyone lost their minds?

The musicians wound down their dance to silence at last, and Rafe de Martine elegantly took his leave of Beatrice. She nodded to him with sophisticated reserve, too smart to swoon, and his smile broadened further. He seemed to be a young man who enjoyed life with great fervor, and he
fairly bounded over to the Count de Feria, taking up his post beside him.

“¿Haya Terminado de bailar?”
de Feria inquired, and their conversation launched into an animated debate. My vantage point gave me an excellent view of them both. I frankly had no idea what they were saying—my Spanish was as bad as Beatrice suspected—but after the young count’s easy reply, de Feria seemed to respond with anger and frustration.

Their words flowed like music, and I stared at them discreetly, my heart in my throat for the whole of the quarter hour that they spoke. Fortunately, though they tried to converse quietly, they were still a bit flamboyant, giving me visual cues to attach to words so that I could memorize their discussion as easily as a dance. I sensed their conversation was ending as the young count lapsed into smooth and placating words, but I remained in place, gawking at the dancers over the heads of the assembled crowd.

At long last, de Feria and Count de Martine took their leave of each other, and I felt my shoulders relax. I held my position another ten minutes until I felt Jane move up beside me. Of all the maids, her walk was the most distinctive, no matter her gown. Her gait was long-limbed and fast, but with a strange efficiency that seemed the exact opposite of Beatrice’s elegant extension. Jane always seemed to be prepared to leap from a crouch, even when she was standing still.

She stood surveying the dancing couples alongside me for a moment before she spoke. “You cannot find this as fascinating as you appear to,” she said.

“I don’t.” I shook my head. “Has de Feria left the room?”

“Not yet. He’s now talking with Cecil and Walsingham.”

“Walsingham?” I half-turned, but Jane’s warning hand made me swivel my gaze back to the dance floor. “And Count de Martine?” I asked.

“Charming his way through a gaggle of lords and ladies as we speak. Beatrice is about to eat her own ruff, even with Cavanaugh panting after her. It almost makes the evening worthwhile.” I felt Jane’s glance upon me. “Did they say anything of import?”

“I couldn’t say.” I gave her a weak smile. “How well do you know Spanish?”

“Not as well as Anna,” Jane admitted. “Should you speak to her before you meet with Cecil to gain an understanding of what you heard? Can you remember all of it?”

“I can remember it, yes,” I said. “Still, Beatrice is right. It’s foolish for me to eavesdrop on a conversation I cannot understand.”

“Foolish like a fox, perhaps,” Jane murmured, narrowing her eyes at Cecil. “And the fox shouldn’t be the only one to know what the Spaniards are planning. We should know, too.”

I hesitated, welcoming her camaraderie but still unsure of my place even after three months in the Queen’s service. I could not afford a misstep in my role as spy, not with my troupe hanging in the balance. “But . . . that wasn’t part of our orders, Jane. Cecil said nothing about me sharing what I learned.”

“Of course he didn’t. But he didn’t say you couldn’t, either. And some secrets are not worth keeping.” She looked at me hard. “Marie told us nothing, Rat, and look what that got her, on a night just like this one.”

A chill shivered down my back. I swallowed. Nodded. And Jane nodded back. “Wait here,” she said.

Within moments she’d returned, dragging a protesting Anna behind her. Jane set the three of us up in a row, her body blocking Anna and me from view. “Now,” Jane commanded to me once Anna was in place. “Speak.”

I leaned forward and began whispering into Anna’s ear.

“You go too fast, you go too fast!” Anna gasped, but then she stilled until I was done. I rocked on my heels and drew in a heavy breath, the words circling back on themselves in my mind, the lines of a play ready to be run again.

Anna looked sick, and Jane prompted her. “Well?” she demanded.

“He . . . the Count de Feria . . . he said terrible things about the Queen,” Anna breathed, her voice hollow. She blushed. “He called her—a
whore
.”

My eyes went wide, but Jane merely grunted with amusement. “He’s a Spaniard. What do you expect him to say? Was there anything of import?”

Anna frowned. “The young Count de Martine is to give de Feria letters—from the pope, he said. He has these letters with him now, but de Feria said no, he would not take them. And de Martine had to convince him to do this ‘one last time,’ and to pass them along as he normally did.”

“Pass them along?” I frowned. Letters from a zealously Catholic pope being sent into the court of a fiercely Protestant queen could only spell danger. “To whom?”

“That part apparently did not need explanation,” Anna said. “The ambassador finally agreed, but he still would not
take the letters here. He said for Rafe to meet him at the Norman Gate.”

“The Norman Gate and not Winchester Tower?” Jane mused. “Then de Martine doesn’t plan to flee after he hands off his information. A hundred steps down from Winchester Tower, and you’re practically at the Thames. Beatrice will be so relieved.”

“Flee?” I asked as I searched the crowd. “How could he leave the castle? Wouldn’t he be questioned?”

Jane shook her head. “Not tonight. No one expects anyone to leave a ball so grand, I can assure you.”

Anna agreed with a sharp nod. “De Feria said the same thing, that the guard would be lax on the night of a grand revel.” She beamed, happy to be in on a secret. “De Feria knows the castle well, it seems.”

“The walls of this old wreck are filled with holes,” Jane said with disgust. “And the guards don’t do a good job filling them.”

“There’s Cecil!” I warned, as he turned and caught my eye.

Instantly Jane hissed “Get down!” to Anna, who obligingly dropped to a huddled ball, remarkably flexible in her heavy gown.

Jane turned and gave me a blithe smile. “Did he see Anna?” she asked through her teeth, as if we weren’t hiding a full-skirted maid behind our own stiff gowns. I stared at Cecil another moment while he stared back at me, and I shook my head uncertainly.

“I don’t think so,” I said. Cecil scowled with even more disapproval. “But it seems he wants something from me, so I, uh—I’d better go to him.”

“Yes, you’d better,” Jane said. “But you won’t say anything about Anna knowing the Spaniard’s conversation, no?”

“Oh, no. You mustn’t!” Anna squeaked from behind us.

“Of course I won’t,” I said, even as Jane ordered Anna to be still.

Then Jane met my gaze, her eyes lit with a grimly satisfied light. “It looks like we have our first secret to keep—but not our last,” she said. She smiled tightly. “The Queen’s new ears are a lot better, it seems, than those we had before.”

She gave me a gentle push toward Cecil. “Be careful, Rat.”

I left the brightly lit hall and slipped into the torch-lined corridor that led away from the Presence Chamber. In the sudden silence my ears pounded with sounds from the ball, the laughter, the music, and the swirling conversations. I pressed my hands against the sides of my torturously-tight corset. It was not difficult to act the part of a maid needing to catch her breath; I could have easily crumpled into a big ruffed heap, right there against the wall.

Over and over the words that de Feria and Count de Martine had spoken replayed in my mind, along with Anna’s rapid translation. Then came Jane’s chilling words about the maid Marie, found with her ears sliced away, on just such a night as this. Her ears had not saved her. Would mine save me?

I came around the corner so quickly that I nearly knocked Cecil down. He lifted his hands hastily to stop me.

“Are you ill?” Cecil asked sharply, and I pulled back, unnerved by the irritation in his tone. He was always so
cross
. Among the Golden Rose players, no one ever berated me. You either succeeded or you starved. There was no emotion attached to it. “Breathe, Miss Fellowes!”

I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until it all came out in a rush. Cecil rolled his eyes, and I found myself wringing my hands against my skirts with embarrassment, like a child reprimanded for sneaking an extra meat pie. The blasted old goat had that effect on me.

He knew it, too. “What did you hear?” Cecil asked, his censure plain. “You seemed most inattentive every time I caught sight of you. Did they speak?”

I nodded, not willing to admit how I had felt at dinner, dizzy with disorientation at the laughing, gorging people all around me. “I have to tell you exactly, Sir William. In Spanish.”

Cecil shifted with impatience, then understanding lit his eyes. He nodded. “Follow me.”

He led me to his official chambers off the Queen’s Privy Chamber and lit the candles on the writing desk. He sat down at the desk, lifted a quill, and dipped it in ink. “Begin,” he said.

And once again I let the words take over me, rolling through the quiet chamber like music on the wind. I felt the cadences and styles of both men—the harsh and angry de Feria, the wry and amused Count de Martine. It took nearly as long to recite as it had to hear the Spaniards’ conversation, but Cecil stopped me only twice, to ensure the inflection I used meant whatever he thought it did.

When I finished, Cecil’s manner appeared quite changed, excited even. He put his quill down and stretched his fingers in the candlelight.

“Now that, Meg, is a faithful retelling. Please be aware that I know the difference.”

I colored, not sure exactly what he meant, but accepting his comment as equal parts approval and criticism. “Yes, Sir William.”

Cecil harrumphed and sat back in his chair. “This is very good,” he said, and he slanted me an approving glance.

“May I ask what they said?” I asked quietly, praying I did not sound false. “My . . . Spanish is not yet skilled enough to—”

“Of course it isn’t,” Cecil said, far too happily. And then to my astonishment he proceeded to
lie
to me about everything except de Feria’s mockery of the castle guards and his shocking words about the Queen, and the fact that the two men were to exchange letters. Only, in Cecil’s retelling, they were letters from
King Philip of Spain
—not the pope, as Rafe had claimed. Why the lie? The Spanish had no long-standing grudge against England—especially given that King Philip had still harbored hopes of marrying Elizabeth until she’d rejected him scant months earlier. The Catholics and the Protestants, however, were very much in the midst of an unofficial war that had lasted for years, worsening now because a new Protestant Queen had taken the throne of England. Mary Tudor’s reign of persecution had been considered by the Catholics to be an act of God. Now Elizabeth’s rise to power was an affront to that same God. Whisperings of a Catholic plot to dethrone Elizabeth had started buzzing even before she had been crowned Queen. For the pope to take part in that plot would make a certain deadly sense.

So why was Cecil lying about the origins of the letters? Was it merely to catch me out should I share the tale with others?

I studied Cecil closely, memorizing his face and his eyes as he gave me his completely false accounting of Rafe’s and de Feria’s conversation. I’d recognize that deceiving look when Cecil lied again, without question. “You may rest assured that the guard will not be slack tonight,” he finished, ripe with satisfaction.

I decided to test my newly minted skills at identifying his deceit. “Was the guard slack the night of Marie Claire’s death?” I asked.

Cecil paused a moment, the distant sounds of the revel wafting toward us down the long hallway. “What do you know of the maid Marie’s death—and who told you?”

“Two ladies were talking at the ball,” I said, shrugging. I could lie better than he. “They said she was found lying against a wall on Saint George’s Day, after a ball not unlike this. Strangled.”
And mutilated.

“Not strangled, precisely,” Cecil said, his tone hard. In this, I knew immediately, he was not deceiving me. “Marie Claire was killed by garrote, a very effective but particularly brutal way to die. You should be familiar with it by now.”