Maid of Wonder (25 page)

There is a rumble of curiosity. Clearly, some of the crowd half-believe Meg's tale. As if they haven't seen her roam the halls of Windsor for lo these past six months!

Meg, for her part, is enjoying herself thoroughly. She steps into the widening space the crowd is making for her, striding for the stage. Behind her, even the pinch-faced shade looks surprised at her act.

“Then I wandered into the night, and twisting, shifting, lost my sight,” Meg cries. “Fell to my death that eve, 'tis true! But again, Lord John, no fault to you!”

Accompanied by another gasp of the crowd, Meg hops up onto the stage, stepping easily toward the shocked and horrified young man. As he slumps back in his chair, Meg kneels down and grasps his hands.

I realize that Marcus is also still holding me tight. “Who did that man on the stage kill?” he asks, almost offhandedly. “Who is he looking at with such dismay?”

“His father.” The words are out before I can catch myself, and Marcus grins down at me.

“You see?” he says. “We are well matched, Sophia. With me at your side, holding your hand, there is nothing you can't see, and without any harm to you.”

His words unnerve me, for all that they are filled with hope and possibility, and I glance away from Marcus, pulling my hand from his and crossing my arms over my chest. Mistress Maude remains at the very edge of the crowd, smiling and laughing, but her eyes are fixed on a point far closer to me, and I turn to see what has captured her attention so.

A woman is struggling up the short steps to the Queen's dais, her head ducked in submission, her hands carrying a tray of soul cakes.

“Soul cakes! Soul cakes,” bellows Mistress Maude from across the Quadrangle, in a voice loud enough to truly wake the dead. Cecil is leaning down to whisper into Elizabeth's ear, and doesn't seem to be paying a wit of attention to what's happening around them both.

Meanwhile, Master James takes up the refrain, incorporating the strange disruption into the play like the experienced troupe master he is. He snatches up one of the cakes
from the plate on the stage and holds it high. “Soul cakes, soul cakes!” he echoes back in his rich baritone. “I pray thee, good missus, a soul cake!”

There is a commotion at the Norman Gate, and Marcus and I wheel around to see a line of women processing into the Upper Ward, bearing trays overladen with the round, white-frosted cakes, each surmounted with black currant crosses. The crowd cheers their delight, and over all of it, Master James calls out again. “One for Peter, two for Paul!” he cries, following the familiar chant. “Three for Him what made us all!”

I glance again at the Queen, and go rigid with shock. Suddenly I focus on the woman at her feet, offering up the tray of soul cakes. Even now, caught up in the excitement of the revel, the Queen is reaching out greedily for the sweet treats without allowing a servant to taste them first. And suddenly I see the soul cakes themselves, as if for the first time.

Everything comes together in my mind.

“Marcus!” I say urgently. “I must go!”

“But why?” He looks at me, his brows winging up. “Sophia, whatever is the—”

I don't give him a chance to finish.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I leap off the small bench and race through the crowd, the play still roaring behind me. Meg is trapped onstage, and I see Beatrice there as well, her head bent down to Robert Dudley, who appears to be crying. I don't see Anna or Jane, however. I look wildly around for them, but it's no use—I have to do this alone.

The crowd presses into me, and fear takes hold.
I'll never make it to the Queen in time!

My heart clamoring with urgency and my need paramount, I slip into the Sight.

For a moment all is still. I realize that I am no longer in the Upper Ward, but just beyond it, in a far darker, more ethereal glade. It is heavy with shadows, and this time I realize in an instant what is missing here: there is no obsidian bench. Nothing to ground me to the outside world but a faint, almost half-remembered pressure that was once at my hands, reminding me that someone waited in the mortal realm for me. Someone true and real.

Then the words of the dark angel roar through my mind anew, vanquishing all other thoughts.

Death plays your Queen in a game without end.

The Queen is to be poisoned, in her moment of greatest triumph.

It circles and crosses, then strikes once again.

By something as sweet and simple . . . as a child's soul cake.

Can this be true? The angels' terrible vision assaults my mind once more—a white field with a black cross, the Queen at its center. And before me, on the mortal plane, the Queen is holding up her cake, the lights from the torches rendering her gown's pattern not the blue and white that I know it to be. Instead, the pearls have turned to flecks of gold, and the blue to deepest black. Just as she was dressed in my vision.

Only, in my vision she was dead.

With great effort I strain to see the world around me as it truly is. The Upper Ward! I must return to the Upper Ward! Gradually the mists clear the tiniest bit and I burst forward, but despite the speed that the Sight has granted me, I am too slow—too awkward. My legs tangle up in my skirts, and just like that, I am falling.

Strong hands yank me upright. I know without looking that it is my dark angel, and my heart surges with hope. Arc will tell me if what I fear is true! My grim specter, however, gives me no time to think. He pulls me up short, pulling me round to face him. Once more he dares to touch me with his gauntleted hands, sending the realm spinning at a frightening speed. Once more he dares to take me in his arms. As the chatter of angels around us diminishes to the sound of whirring birds and clicking insects, Arc grasps both my hands with his left, then lifts his right hand to my cheek. I
force myself to hold my chin steady, to peer into the darkness where there should be a face. From the black shadows of his cowl, something stares back at me, but it is not human, exactly. It is barely discernible beneath the flames flickering around his hood.

You are afraid of me.
His breathing is labored, his pain intense.
Afraid I will harm you.
Fire blazes from the edges of his cowl at what he must see in my eyes.
Never
.

His tone is full of rebuke, and I swallow, compelling myself back to my purpose here. My duty is to the Crown. Straightening my shoulders, I set aside my fear and force myself to ask the question burning in my heart.

“I believe there is a woman set upon killing the Queen,” I say. Conflicting images assault me. First, the vision I saw in my cell within the castle—Elizabeth as an old woman, regal and proud, her face laden with heavy paints like some sort of precious work of art. Then, hard upon that, is the sight of Elizabeth young and beautiful, crumpled in her fine gown on a field of ghostly white, the crown toppled from her head. Which vision is true? Which will come to pass? “Does she strike tonight? Will she poison the Queen?”

A shudder passes through the dark angel.
The price is high for what you seek.
His voice is agonized, even as his gauntleted hand firms on my cheek.
It is always so high.

“I must know, Arc,” I say, and watch as he shivers again, as if even the sound of his name causes him pain. A tittering of angels surrounds us once more, and Arc scowls to the right, as much as an entity can scowl with no face. Still, a harsh wind immediately rushes through the clearing, transforming
the spirits' sniggers to screams. Arc and I stand in the middle of the maelstrom, his cloak surging up and around us. He has dropped his hands away from me, and I step back, confused. And then I understand what he's doing.

He has drawn off his long leather gauntlets, and the sight of what lies beneath those heavy gloves quails my heart in my chest. Arc's hands are scored with thick white scars, his forearms as well. As if he had run through a forest of flaming swords, the blades slashing the meat from his bones. I blink up at him as he lifts his hands to his cowl, shifting it back. Then I stare as the wind howls around us.

I can see his face.

He has a
face
.

The being gazing down at me is unlike any angel I have ever imagined. He is not a fleshy child surmounted by a halo, nor a beatific mother beaming down at her children. He is a battle-hardened warrior, his face partially hidden by a large black-and-silver mask that covers his eyes and nose. The skin beneath that mask is ravaged by scars, his face brutally handsome at one time, and now—merely brutal. He is dressed like the finest courtier, in a black-and-silver-embroidered doublet and loose breeches slashed with yet more silver panels. His hosiery is black as well, and it looks like spun silk. Instead of shoes he wears riding boots that have been polished to a high shine. He has a ruff at his neck, but it is so simple that it is little more than folded cloth.

I struggle to keep myself upright as, through his mask, Arc watches me with hauntingly familiar eyes. Then his gaze shifts to something over my shoulder, and I turn. The world
around me feels utterly wrong, and it takes me only a moment to realize what has changed.

No one else is moving.

They are caught, suspended almost, as if time had been ripped away for a moment, forced to hold its breath.

“What's happening?” I whisper.

Arc gestures me forward. “The feast of Samhain is a tradition older than recorded history.” He speaks with a voice rough from disuse, and I realize these words are spoken
aloud
, not merely in my head.

“Now so much is lost,” he continues. “The people are left only with the superstitions—these festivals, the fires.” He nods at a towheaded child caught midstep, racing through the crowd with a round white cake decorated with a cross of black currant jelly, his eyes alight with mischief. “The soul cakes, I believe you call them in this time. But the one piece of the tradition everyone still recalls, if in a slightly altered form, is that of the dead being able to walk among the living.”

“I see them,” I say, for the dead are still here, angry and fierce, wailing and morose. They too are caught in time, their silent cries halted. In fact, no one is moving except for the angels themselves. And they are walking among the frozen bodies of mortals and shades as if they had stepped into a garden of sculptures.

“The dead cannot truly walk,” Arc says. “They are but shades, even on this night. But they can be seen by those who knew them as who they once were. Seen and remembered, whether such recognition brings joy, or pain, or sorrow, or horror. They are not forgotten, in the end.” He shrugs. We
are steps away from the Queen. She has a cake in her hand, her eyes laughing, her mouth smiling. She is leaning forward, ready to savor the sugary confection.

“Miss Sophia.” The dark angel's words draw my attention back. He is smiling down at me, and I feel something shiver inside me, an emotion I have never quite felt before, in all the years of my life.

“But—the Queen,” I say, though in truth I am trapped in the spell of Arc's gaze. Not even with Marcus have I felt this unabashed wonder, as if a flower were unfurling inside me, precious and soft. “I must go to her.”

“There remains a moment more,” he murmurs, his haunted eyes searching mine. “I have long wished to walk with you on this night, Miss Sophia. While I have of late seen you with greater clarity, both alone and with—with the assistance of a young man.”

He pauses, and I rush to supply the name. “Marcus,” I say.

Arc frowns at the name, his manner almost uncertain, but there seems no judgment in him, and the warmth within me grows, suffusing my body as he smiles. “With this young man you call Marcus, it is not the same as seeing you here, like this.”

I stare at him, trying to commit his ravaged face to my memory. “But how is it I can see so much of you now? And why do you wear the cowl and the cloak?”

He chooses to answer only the second question. “I wear the cloak and cowl because on every other day but this, to see so much of my face would be to cause you death,” he says, his words quiet and plainly stated, but the tone
beneath them heavy with a thousand years of sorrow. “You or any like you, Miss Sophia. But I should regret causing you harm, most of all.”

“But you are . . .” I reach toward his face, and he reflexively shifts away.

“Nay,” he says. “You must never touch my face directly, Miss Sophia. It is the one thing I dare not allow, not even when the clock strikes twelve this night.” His smile is wintry soft, filled with regret. He lifts his head again, his attention shifting to the Queen. “Ah. It seems a moment's grace is all I am to be spared.”

My own gaze slides past the Queen and fixes on the stage. James is there, of course, but he is not staring at the Queen at all. He is staring at Walsingham . . . only it's a Walsingham that I have never seen before. The spymaster's eyes are wide, his face white with fear, his mouth stretched tight in horror, as if he were issuing forth a silent scream. He appears to be leaping forward, bracing himself on the shoulders of two men directly in front of him, his eyes fixed on the Queen. He knows, I realize. He knows the Queen is about to eat the cake, and he recognizes the white field upon it, with its black cross. But who else fears for her?

Robert Dudley is staring at Elizabeth, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. But then, he's always staring, moony-eyed, at Elizabeth, so that's of no account. Cecil is not; he's conferring with a guard. There are maybe a half dozen other men looking at the Queen, their faces a mix of adoration, respect, interest, lust, jealousy, outrage. It is ever thus. But none of these courtiers seem to comprehend
the truth of what is about to befall her. None of them but Walsingham and me.

Then, finally, I see Maude.

She is hovering at the right of the Quadrangle, as if she's edging away. But she is frozen too, staring at the Queen with earnest intensity. And there is triumph in her eyes.

She believes her work is almost finished. That the Queen will die this night.

Horror lances through me, and yet it is as if I were watching the scene the way an artist might a painting, with everything unfinished upon the canvas. With one sweep of a brush, I can change the picture entirely, I feel it in my bones. And yet . . . how?

Arc stands away from me and offers me another short bow. “Time has not stopped here, but merely has moved to a snail's pace. And we can no longer tarry, when your Queen is at such risk.” He smiles sadly, nodding at my understanding of his words. “Not everything you saw in your vision will happen this night, fair Sophia. But this will, unless you stop it. This will.”

Mesmerized by Arc's words, I turn back to the Queen and realize he speaks the truth. While before her smile was broad and her eyes laughing, now her gaze has shifted down, her attention focused on the small, perfectly formed cake in her hand. A field of white, surmounted by a black cross. The merest moment has passed, and yet I too feel the weight of time lurching forward.

Still, panic seizes me at the thought of leaving Arc's side. There is something more I must understand here,
something I am missing! I look back at him. “We still have some moments left,” I say, shocking myself at my own words. But the Queen will always need to be saved, after all. Whereas Arc . . . “Why did you find me here?” I ask him baldly. “I didn't summon you, or speak your name.”

“No,” he says, his tone almost self-mocking. “But here, this night—it is the closest thing to seeing you on your own plane that I may ever be granted, Miss Sophia. I wanted that, above all else.” He smiles again, shaking his head. “I suppose I am a fool.”

“No.” I flush. His eyes are fixed on mine, and I feel dizzy to be so near to him and yet apart—so far apart—that I cannot imagine we will ever be able to cross this distance again.

“Would you . . .” I flail about for words, again wanting there to be something—anything—to bind us together, some memory strong enough to link us across the planes. “Would you kiss me?” The very idea of asking for something so brazen mortifies me, but what am I to do? I can't let Arc slip away into the shadows of the spirit realm, lost to me forever.