Traitor and the Tunnel (12 page)

The rungs weren’t painful y cold: a surprise, until Mary remembered the insulating properties of being underground. They did, however, leave a thin coating of slime against her palms, her sleeves, her cheek when she accidental y brushed too close. She descended twelve rungs before her searching foot encountered only emptiness. Damn. She crouched –

no mean feat on a ladder, in a crinoline – and shone her inadequate little light downwards. It flickered wildly, and this time it wasn’t due to her shaking hand. Yet it revealed nothing – no visible floor, no detail that gave a clue as to what lay below.

Mary snuffed out the flame and put away the candle, heedless of the dripping wax that promptly made a smal pool in her pocket. Gripping the lowest rung tightly with both hands, she lowered herself down with a smooth, athletic motion. Felicity and Anne had sometimes remarked on her uncommon strength – her ability to pul herself up by the arms, even when encumbered by a stone’s worth of clothing. But tonight, her arms felt bruised and shaky.

She was grateful when her toes brushed something solid. Tested the surface and found it wide and even.

Releasing the rung and resisting the temptation to wipe her hands on her skirts, she listened to the new atmosphere about her. It had a slightly hol ow sound.

She relit her candle and raised it up, the better to inspect her new discovery. It was a smal room, apparently an antechamber of sorts with a doorway at the other side. Unlike the tunnel she’d just come through, it had a brick floor. In fact, it was a tube of a room, with curved wal s that led up to a low, curved ceiling – another tunnel fashioned in bricks.

Mary shook her head slowly, a smal smile curving her lips. How utterly unlikely, how preposterous, to think that Honoria Dalrymple was mixed up in al this grime and skulking about. The room was empty, and it was unclear what purpose it served. A clandestine meeting-place? A store-room for il icit goods? A secret escape route? She would write to the Agency for more background detail. Perhaps she’d not al owed enough time.

She crossed the room slowly. The second opening was barricaded with closely spaced wooden planks, fixed in place from the other side.

There were, technical y, gaps large enough to peer through but her candle showed nothing but blackness. She’d no idea whether she was looking at a wal , six inches away, or another endless tunnel.

Mary frowned at the barrier. She could remove a plank easily enough, she imagined, by kicking it loose. Yet after that, she’d have no way of replacing it in an unobtrusive fashion. It would obviously have been tampered with.

Even so, it was instructive. The wooden planks were recent and solid, not ancient and rotting. They weren’t even that grimy. Someone else had been here in the last few months and seen fit to barricade the tunnel. Someone else had accessed the tunnel from its other end. And – now that she peered through the planks from a new angle – someone had affixed a sign that said:

– DANGER –

ABSOLUTELY

NO ACCESS

She blinked and glanced back into the chamber.

There were no obvious hazards, of course, unless one counted spil ed poisons. Or the tunnels suddenly caving in.

At that, a smal , distinct chil rippled down her back

– and it was nothing to do with the threat of being trapped underground. She turned back to the sign and frowned at the lettering. It was difficult to say, of course, reading backwards by candlelight – and she’d seen so few examples of his handwriting, and never this sort of block-printing. Yet there was something about the way the letters were formed that raised her suspicions. She felt a rush of warmth.

A sense of dread. A thundering in her ears, her throat, her pounding pulse. Al this, at the mere thought of the man.

She leaned against the wal , feeling suddenly weary. It was a sickness of hers, dreaming up James Easton in the unlikeliest places. But flowing beneath that fear was the knowledge that he was, indeed, at work beneath the Palace. She pushed the thought away with difficulty and looked at her candle: burning low. She sighed – and then paused. Closed her eyes as the truth struck her. She was a fool for not realizing it earlier. That was the source of the wet, almost metal ic smel : she’d just entered the underground sewer system.

It was warmer than she’d expected. Less smel y, too – the air was dank, but not suffocating or nauseating. The Thames smel ed worse on a daily basis than did this sewer drain. Standing at one point within this vast underground maze of tunnels, Mary felt her choices dwindling. The case was closing in on her.

She looked again at the notice. Now that she knew where she was – knew that it had to be his – it seemed surprising she’d ever doubted the handwriting. Denial was a waste of energy, but at this hour, she simply couldn’t contemplate more. She had to go – to bed, to sleep if possible and, at some point, to consider two inevitable tasks that lay before her.

James Easton.

Lang Jin Hai.

Both men she’d have to talk to in the near future.

She couldn’t imagine anything she’d like more. Or less.

Twelve

St Valentine’s Day

Buckingham Palace

Morning came far too soon, but sleep not at al .

Mary lay awake through the cold night, listening to Amy’s breathing and the muffled chiming of a distant grandfather clock, measuring out the quarter-hours.

At six, she pul ed herself out of bed feeling utterly bruised in spirit. Appropriately, she was also somewhat damaged in body: the hawthorns had made their mark, leaving a number of deep scratches on the backs of her hands and one on her neck. She pul ed a face at her reflection to gruesome good effect, the dark circles beneath her eyes made more macabre by the way Amy’s cheap looking-glass swel ed her chin and shrank her forehead. She’d always dreamed of being reunited with her father. Now that it was a possibility, she looked like a ghoul and he was in gaol. Perfect.

While the Queen had breakfast, Mary was responsible for cleaning and airing Her Majesty’s private parlour. She was crouched down, laying a new fire, when the door clicked open. Mrs Shaw, of course, checking up on her again. But when she stood and turned, it wasn’t Mrs Shaw at al .

“Oh, I say – is that you, Mary? It is Mary, isn’t it?”

Her eyes widened as she stared into the sheepish face of the Prince of Wales. Dropped a reflexive curtsey. Stifled a curse. “Your Highness. I didn’t know you wanted the parlour.”

“I – er – was just on my way to breakfast.”

“In your dressing-gown, sir?” She cringed. Too impertinent, by far.

And yet he smiled. “Actual y, I was hoping for a breakfast tray.” That was logical enough: if he kept to his room, he needn’t face his mother.

She kept her tone demure. “Very good, sir. I’l ask Mrs Shaw straight away.”

“Actual y…” His hand fluttered in the air for a moment, arresting her movement, before dropping to his side. “I’d like you to bring it. Yes.”

Her stomach lurched. Trouble snapped at her heels from al directions. After a few moments, she found her voice. “Very good, sir.”

Prince Bertie muttered something and fled.

When Mary relayed the message to Mrs Shaw, the housekeeper’s eyes widened. “He asked for you particularly?”

“Yes.”

The sharp eyes raked her appearance, lingered suspiciously on her scratched neck. “You’re quite certain.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

A pause. “That’s not the way to promotion in this household, my girl; that’s the swiftest path to a Home for Fal en Women.”

Despite Mrs Shaw’s fears, one didn’t say no to the Prince of Wales – not directly, at least. A quarter of an hour later, Mary was treading noiselessly to the Prince’s apartments – a rather glorious term for a bedroom with a smal sitting room attached –

carrying a tray heavy with breakfast delicacies: cold roasted meats, coddled eggs, devil ed kidneys, both bread-and-butter and toast.

As she’d suspected, the Prince was alone in his apartments – a suspicious circumstance as he was, at least in theory, constantly attended by one or two equerries. He was seated in a wing chair, studying a French newspaper with an expression of great wisdom. As she approached, he glanced up with elaborate surprise. “Oh. That was prompt.”

She dipped her head. “Mrs Shaw sent a little of everything, sir.”

“Leave that tray for a moment, Mary, and come here.”

She hesitated briefly, then advanced two smal paces, keeping herself wel out of arm’s reach.

“What is it, sir?” She couldn’t decide whether or not to look him straight in the eye. Doing so would be a defiant stance on her part, and one the Prince might misconstrue as bold invitation.

“Come and sit by me.” His hand waved vaguely to the place beside his armchair – although there was not, of course, a second chair or stool.

“I’l fetch a chair, sir.” Mary turned aside, wondering for one crazy moment what her chances were of simply fleeing the room. Would Prince Bertie chase her down the corridor? Invent a story to have her dismissed?

But just as she began to move away, the Prince said, “Just – never mind the chair – it’s only – I’d like a word.” His voice sounded smal and shuttered.

She glanced down: yes, his eyes were suspiciously bright.

She felt a sudden easing in her chest. “Of course, sir.” She returned to stand beside the chair again, wondering if she ought to offer him a handkerchief.

Prince Bertie took several deep breaths, which seemed to keep the tears from rol ing. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“What is, sir?”

“Expecting you to be kind to me. But the other day

– was it yesterday? I forget – you seemed so sympathetic. As though you understood what it must be like, being me.”

Mary pressed her lips together to keep from making a face. “I don’t know, exactly, but I can imagine, sir.”

He looked up at her through bloodshot eyes.

“Then you’ve a devil of an imagination. Most of the time, I can’t even imagine what’s required of me –

even as I’m doing it.”

It was that sudden, as though he’d pul ed off a mask. Mary stared at the Prince of Wales, her irritation suddenly submerged by a wave of pity.

Prince Bertie was stil a ridiculous figure, to be sure.

His plump cheeks and heavy eyelids gave him the air of a sleepy schoolboy; the class dunce, even. But what else was he, real y? Other people’s expectations were rather beside the point just now.

With bloodshot eyes and slumped posture, he was real y just a very young man in disgrace, suffering under the weight of family disapproval and his own guilty conscience.

She knelt beside the wing chair. “There, there,”

she murmured – and as if on cue, the Prince’s face crumpled. His eyes wel ed over, the tears forming fast-running rivers down his cheeks. Mary felt his breath, hot and childlike on her fingers, as he clasped her hand and wept, his whole frame shuddering with the effort.

They remained locked in their awkward clasp – he was hugging her arm like a favourite dol – for only a few minutes, at most. Then, as though recal ed to himself, Prince Bertie released her and sat back in his chair, trying to stanch the tears.

Mary fumbled for a handkerchief. She never had a clean handkerchief. But His Highness was already shaking his head and gasping, trying to master himself. His forced smile was grotesque – more of a fright mask than a facial expression. But it was an attempt. He found his own square of beautiful y monogrammed silk – so infinitely superior to her own meagre scrap of hemmed cotton – and mopped himself. When he blew his nose, he honked so loudly that she blinked.

He winced. “Apologies.” He glanced at her damp arm. “I mean, for everything.”

“Not at al .” It was partly reflex – what else could she say? – but Mary meant it.

He was silent for a moment. “It’s quite pathetic, what I did, isn’t it? Asking you up here for a friendly bit of chat. As though you’ve a choice: my family pays your wages.”

“No,” said Mary quickly. “It needn’t be like that.”

Prince Bertie looked at her through bulging, red-rimmed eyes. “Real y?”

She shook her head. “I’m just somebody you happened to run into. I mean, it was quite by chance that I was in the parlour just now. It could have been any other servant.”

He studied the floor, almost shy, now.

“Forget that I’m the parlour-maid. If you’d like someone to talk to, I’l listen.” The words felt awkward in her mouth. This was a new role for her, the sympathetic confidante. And she had her own, highly suspect motives for playing it: she was talking to an eyewitness – the most important eyewitness –

to Beaulieu-Buckworth’s death. What might he remember, or reveal by accident? She couldn’t al ow herself to hope. But here she was, nonetheless.

The Prince’s gaze floated back up to her face. “It’s not very regal of me … not manly, either – His Royal Highness the Prince Consort would be scandalized.”

Deep sigh. “But then, what’s new about that?

Father’s appal ed by everything I do.”

Mary stayed silent. This was a strange, one-sided intimacy. He was so unsteady, so childlike – if she pressed him in any way, he’d turn on her a moment later. He stil might, if she couldn’t help him.