The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [111]
I was floundering, fighting against the unraveling of my own self.
“And it was…?” I managed to utter. Silence ensued. For the first time, Cecil wavered, as if he debated whether or not to continue.
The cruelty of the game finally unhinged me.
“TELL ME!” My dagger clattered to the floor as I grabbed him by the doublet and rammed him hard against the wall. “Tell me this instant!”
In a low voice Cecil said, “You are the last son of Mary of Suffolk. The herbalist, Mistress Alice—the Suffolk household accounts show she had been in service to the late duchess; she attended her at Westhorpe in June of 1533. And years before, Lady Dudley had attended her as well, in France when Mary went to wed King Louis. These three women knew each other, and each was connected to you, the foundling whom Lady Dudley had brought to court to use against Frances of Suffolk.”
With a strangled sound that was part moan, part sob, I released him. I staggered back, plunged back to that day years ago when Lady Dudley had taken the book of psalms from me. I saw its frontispiece in my mind, the handwritten dedication in French in that elegant feminine script. I had not understood, though it too had been with me, all along.
A mon amie, de votre amie, Marie.
That book I had stolen and carried with me in my saddlebag belonged to my mother. She had bequeathed it to a favored attendant—a lady who accompanied her during her brief time as queen of France, a lady she must have trusted, one she had called friend.
Lady Dudley. She had betrayed my mother’s memory to further her own terrible ends.
Grabbing hold of the nearest chair, I threw it across the room. I wanted to tear the roof down about our ears, scour the walls to ashes, rip off my own skin. I spun back to him, enraged, my fists clenched and held before me.
He didn’t shift a muscle. “Strike me if you must. But it won’t return what was taken from you. I may be guilty of many things, but I did not do this. I did not steal your birthright. Lady Dudley did; she concealed it. She used and murdered your Mistress Alice for it.”
I was beyond reason. An abyss opened beneath my feet, full of horrors I did not want to see. Of Lady Dudley, I could believe anything, including this monstrous deed. But my poor Alice … How could she have left me in ignorance, all these years? How could she have not realized that, in the end, what I did not know might be the one thing used against me?
“Alice cared for me,” I heard myself whisper, as if I needed to convince myself. “She kept me safe.… They mangled her, tethered her like a beast, only to kill her in the end.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “They did. And she endured it, out of love for you.”
I looked at him. “Is that what it was? Love?”
“Never doubt it. Mistress Alice gave her life to you. She took you from your dying mother, from the sister who wanted you dead, and brought you to the one place where she thought you’d be safe. She couldn’t have known what would occur; no one could have foreseen it, all those years ago. But she must have suspected enough about Lady Dudley to take steps to protect you. Your name alone proves it.”
I thrust out a hand. “No more. Please. I—I cannot bear it.”
“You must.” He shifted from the wall. “You must accept the treachery and the lies, and you must overcome them. Otherwise, it will be your undoing.” He paused. “She named you Brendan not because of her reverence for the saint but because it is the Latin form of the Irish name Bréanainn, which is derived from ‘prince’ in ancient Welsh. Mistress Alice gave you your legacy from the start. It has been with you all this time.”
“Then why?” Desperation edged