The Virgin's Daughter (32 page)

At last Lord Burghley entered. He looked tired and every year of his age, lines etched deeply around his mouth. “I apologize, Your Highness,” he said, raising a hand to stop her flow of complaints and worries. “We did not mean to leave you in suspense, but there were measures that needed to be put into place immediately.”

“What measures? What is going on?” Anabel heard her sharpness and knew it for fear.

“An hour ago, there was an assassination attempt on Her Majesty. A pistol at close range, that mercifully misfired. The man has been taken to the Tower for closer questioning, and a search made of the grounds and chambers to ensure there are no others lying in wait.”

Anabel drew a steadying breath. This was not the first attempt on her mother’s life. It was, however, the first time she herself had been
in close proximity and part of the immediate aftereffects. She felt almost light-headed with relief and was glad when Pippa put an arm around her shoulder.

“Thank you for your care, Lord Burghley,” Anabel said. “I imagine my mother is even now arguing with Walsingham about whether she is permitted to leave her chambers in the immediate future.”

The Lord Treasurer said wryly, “I wager that is an argument the queen will win. Her Majesty will never allow her movements to be dictated by fear or threats. Tomorrow she will be about England’s business once more. No doubt she will summon you shortly to reassure you herself.”

When Burghley had gone, Anabel looked at Pippa. “Do you still think a few letters to Mary Stuart will ease tensions? As long as there are two queens on English soil, my mother’s life will never be safe.”

—

Elizabeth refused to settle, forcing Walsingham to pace with her as she restlessly circled her privy chamber. She had sent her ladies away after the immediate furor, not wanting to be surrounded by shocked females, and she gave full vent to her displeasure.

“In my own palace, Walsingham!” she raged. “The temerity of the man! To threaten the Queen of England in her own home.”

“Would it have been less offensive if he had shot at you in the street, Your Majesty?” She always knew when Walsingham was annoyed with her; he clipped off the ends of his words and let sarcasm colour his tone.

“Who is he?” she demanded.

“We’ll know more tomorrow. I’ll go to the Tower myself tonight and question him.”

“I want answers,” she ordered. “Answers that can be trusted. How am I to rule if I do not know precisely what my enemies are about?”

“As I’ve long said, information is our most precious asset. If this man is part of the Nightingale Plot, then our need for information grows more acute. May I suggest that when Lucette Courtenay lands
in Dover, she be brought to court with the LeClerc brothers? I feel certain that one or both of them has information pertinent to Nightingale. Let us deal with them up front.”

Elizabeth stopped moving and closed her eyes. The bands of a sick headache were making themselves felt around her head, and she had to will herself not to show it. For one brief moment she wished that she didn’t have to deal with this, that she was nothing more than a king’s sister placidly wed and valued mostly for her appearance and wit.

She opened her eyes and looked out at the privy garden, sedate and controlled in its beauty. As she must be controlled. “Very well,” she answered. “Bring Lucette and her trailing Frenchmen to court. Phrase it as a generous offer on our part, to welcome them. Might as well remind everyone that Lucette’s future is very much of interest to me, and you can do whatever it is you do to uncover their secrets. In ten days I leave on progress.”

“What of Princess Anne?”

“I want her out of London,” Elizabeth said flatly. “I will not risk her being confronted by an assassin. She can go to Wynfield Mote. There is no one I trust more than Dominic Courtenay, and Wynfield is easily isolated from outsiders.”

“If one of the LeClerc brothers is involved with Nightingale—”

“Then you must make certain you uncover the danger before Lucette takes either one of them home with her.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Now to deal with the emotional reactions from her daughter and Lucette. All told, Elizabeth would prefer to deal with assassins.

EIGHTEEN

L
ucette presented herself to her queen within two hours of her arrival at Richmond Palace. Her journey from Blanclair weighed heavily on her. Nicolas had been impeccably polite and appropriately affectionate; Dr. Dee had been puzzled both by the unexpected announcement of her betrothal and her refusal to discuss it with him; and Julien…

She could not allow herself to think about Julien. The terrible starkness with which he had made his last farewell in her bedchamber haunted her. But she would not break. She had set herself a task and she would finish it. No matter the cost.

Although she had hoped to find Pippa in residence with Anabel at court, she was resigned when told the two of them had gone ahead to Wynfield Mote. Her little sister’s wisdom would have to wait. For now, Lucette appropriated a maid and had herself dressed in the same plum-coloured gown she had worn the night she met Julien in Paris.

Then she drew a deep breath and presented herself to the queen.

Elizabeth met her in her presence chamber, though the elegant space might have seemed too large for simply herself, Walsingham,
and Lucette. But no chamber that Elizabeth inhabited could be too large, for she fit herself to every surrounding. As Lucette executed a heartfelt curtsey, she was swept by a genuine feeling of humility and thankfulness for England’s ruler, a reminder that the Nightingale Plot was not an intellectual puzzle but a matter of life and death. It sobered her, and tempered her previous irritation with Walsingham’s lies.

After a frank appraisal, Elizabeth said, “You do not seem to have materially suffered on your journey. It might even be thought that France agreed with you. France…or at least a Frenchman or two. Dr. Dee tells us Nicolas LeClerc has all but claimed you for himself. What have you to say to that?”

Perhaps it was possible to be appreciative and irritated at the same time. Lucette said carefully, “Surely the more pressing question is what I have learned of the Nightingale Plot.”

“And does not that have something to do with a specific Frenchman?”

“It does.”

“Care to tell us which one?” Elizabeth probed. At her side, Walsingham had not moved his fixed gaze from Lucette, as though reading her every expression for truth.

Lucette turned her own gaze to his. “First, I should like the Lord Secretary to explain why he lied to me by omission. Why did you not tell me that Julien LeClerc is in your employ?”

“Because I was—and am—not certain that he is only in my employ. Indeed, technically he is not in my employ at all, as he has never accepted a single pence from England. In the last eight years, he has provided good intelligence and helped save the lives of many Huguenots by diverting them here. He has done so by maintaining contacts within various Catholic conspiracies in France, and thus can never be wholly trusted. How do I know he is not playing me for the benefit of his French friends?”

“It was critical information. By omitting it, you made my job harder.”

“By omitting it, I left you able to observe what was actually happening
rather than what your prejudices might make you believe was happening. I have kept Her Majesty alive for more than twenty years now—I know what I am doing.”

Since a fit of pique would get her nothing but a reputation for stamping her feet like a spoiled child, Lucette acknowledged his explanation with a curt nod.

“Now,” Walsingham leaned forward, “what did you learn of Nightingale and the connection to Blanclair?”

“How much detail would you like?”

Elizabeth spoke sharply. “We would hear it all.”

And so Lucette talked, much as she had at Blanclair to Dr. Dee. The queen kept her standing the entire time. She began with the cardinal with whom she’d seen Julien speaking that first night at the Paris reception, through her initial days at Blanclair and her impressions of the key players in the household—from Felix’s hostile tutor to the slightly too familiar groom who spent long periods away from the chateau—her search of the family’s personal spaces, up until the night she went to the inn and found Julien with the English Catholic courier.

Only then did she pause, not so much for effect as to make sure she didn’t get lost in her own flow of words and spill out everything personal that had followed between her and Julien.

“After he discovered me in the inn that night,” she said carefully, “I fell ill and spent the next few days confined to my chamber. On the day after I emerged, the body of that same messenger was discovered on Blanclair’s grounds. Just one day earlier, Julien had informed me that he himself had been working with England since 1572. In light of those two events, I began to reconsider the information I had gathered thus far.”

“And would you care to share your conclusions?” Walsingham drawled.

“The dead courier had a badge carved with a nightingale on his person. Julien gave it to me.”

“You think that clears him?” Walsingham asked.

“Why would he give it to me, when he knew I was looking for connections to Nightingale?”

“Precisely because he knew you were looking. Sometimes it’s wise to preempt any discoveries that an enemy might make. That does not prove innocence.”

“It doesn’t prove guilt, either,” she shot back.

“Do I detect a wish to prove Julien’s innocence?”

“You told me when you asked me to do this that you would be just as glad for Blanclair to be cleared of involvement as to discover their guilt. Did you speak truly?”

“Why do I think you are uncomfortable with your own defense?”

For the first time, not caring what weakness she revealed, Lucette looked away from both queen and intelligencer. Beating in her head was that damning message from Anise and the fragment of the Spanish letter with it. She had told not a soul of either. At this point, it was more than instinct guiding her. It was fear. She did not trust anyone to understand the whole of the puzzle as she did. Walsingham and the queen had not been at Blanclair. They had not felt the pressure of secrets and hatred beneath the surface. They would have no reason not to believe the maid’s evidence against Julien.

So Lucette equivocated.

“You were right—someone at Blanclair is running the Nightingale Plot. And so I have brought you both brothers, that one wiser than I might turn his mind to the conundrum of guilt or innocence.”

“What evidence do you have pointing at Nicolas LeClerc?”

“Nothing significantly more nor less than that pointing at Julien. It’s simply…” She trailed off.

Elizabeth, silent through their exchange, leaned forward in her seat. “Simply what?”

“I have no firm evidence, but I am certain that it is one of the brothers. It is the elegant answer. It is the piece that makes the pattern whole.”

Walsingham studied her for a long minute, expression inscrutable. At last he nodded once. “I have a plan to flush out the mastermind.
We shall welcome your guests with courtesy tonight, and set things in motion tomorrow. I expect we will not need to keep you at court longer than a week at most.”

Lucette curtsied, and wondered bleakly what her life would be like a week from now. If it were Nicolas, as she believed, Julien would, first, refuse to believe it, and second, never forgive her for setting his brother up. And if it were Julien…

Either way, she’d lost Julien. Elizabeth’s life and England’s security would have to compensate for that loss.

—

Nicolas positively relished every moment of the journey to England and the heretic’s court. Though Lucette was not as easily pinned down as he’d expected, she accepted his affection with good grace, considering how her heart must be breaking for Julien. In fact, Nicolas took far more satisfaction from Julien’s grief and fury than he did in Lucette’s company. His brother had had things his own way for so long, why should not Nicolas enjoy discomfiting him?

You want her, Julien? Welcome to my circumscribed world, in which wanting must remain forever unfulfilled
.

Once they reached court, there was business to attend to. Nicolas’s English contacts were waiting for him, eager to be of use to bring down the Protestant queen. It was simply a matter of manipulating their expectations. A matter at which he was highly skilled. What had his life ever been but a manipulation of expectations? He’d spent his youth running rings around women and their expectation of love, while simultaneously presenting his family with the face they’d expected to see—that of a dutiful eldest son. Intelligence work was no different. These days people saw in him what he’d conditioned them to see: a studious, introverted widower who preferred to keep his distance from politics and violence.

Only with Julien did his well of anger and ambition and envy occasionally spill out—but Julien was too damaged by his own guilt to read rightly his brother’s emotions.

On the very first night at Richmond, Nicolas made contact with a French official of the ambassador’s party who knew of the Nightingale Plot. Only a piece of it, which was all most people knew. Nicolas alone held the whole in his hands. The man received his brief orders and slipped away, unaware that his part in the whole was about to come to an end. Across the crowded hall—to which the English queen had not appeared, though both Lord Burghley and her Lord Secretary, Walsingham, were in attendance—Nicolas watched Julien watching Lucette.