The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [112]
He went quiet for a moment before he said, “I can’t say. All I can think of is that she depended on Alice’s complicity. Any servant could raise you as one belonging to the lower class, and that was the illusion Lady Dudley had to create, that you belonged to no one. But servants gossip; word could get out about you. We can assume Lady Dudley knew you had to be hidden from Frances of Suffolk, and she needed someone to care for you whom she could trust. Alice would do both, so Lady Dudley took the risk that one day she might tell you the truth. At the time, there was no pressing need to do otherwise. You were still a babe; you could die, as many do. Nobody knew how the succession would resolve itself, but a secret like you could prove invaluable. Absolute silence was required—silence and the patience to wait.”
He paused, watching me. My heart pounded in my ears. There was more; I could feel it uncoiling just beneath the surface, shedding its brittle false skin.
Then Cecil added, “Of course, there is another possibility. Perhaps Lady Dudley did not kill Mistress Alice at first because she knew Alice had confided in someone else; someone who would reveal your existence should anything happen to her. If so, then between Alice and this other person, Lady Dudley found herself cornered; she did not dare act impulsively, at least not until she found her opportunity when King Edward fell ill.” He paused. “Is there anyone you can think of whom your Mistress Alice might have trusted with so dangerous a secret?”
I went still, recalling Stokes’s words: But something happened in those last hours; Mary of Suffolk must have confided in the midwife, said something that fostered her mistrust.…
And then Mary Tudor’s: Charles of Suffolk’s … squire came to see me. A stalwart man …
I wanted to bolt from the room, run as far as I could. I didn’t want to know anymore. There would be no peace for me, no hiding. I’d be condemned to search until the end of my days.
But it was already too late. I knew how Alice had protected herself: with my birthmark, which another servant caring for me would see. And I also knew whom she had confided in. Like everything else, it had been there all along, waiting for me to learn enough to see it.
I shook my head in response to Cecil’s question. “No, I don’t. And it doesn’t matter. Mistress Alice is dead.” I hardened my voice. “But I know this much: You have no proof. There is no proof. I intend to keep it that way.” I met his eyes. “If you ever tell another soul, I will kill you.”
He chuckled. “I’m relieved to hear it.” He adjusted his doublet, walked past the broken chair to his valise as if we’d been discussing the weather. “Because the revelation of your birth could create complications that would be most unfortunate for all concerned—especially you.”
Raw laughter burst from me. “Is that why Walsingham was on the leads with a dagger? Given the uncertainty surrounding the succession, I must have presented a terrible hindrance!”
“You were never a hindrance.” Cecil draped his cloak about his shoulders. “I underestimated your ingenuity perhaps, but I had no intention of letting you die, in my service or otherwise.” The gravity in his tone took me aback. “If you consider the events, you’ll see that when you first arrived here, all I had was an unfounded rumor and knowledge of an herbalist who had once served Mary of Suffolk. I couldn’t possibly have known everything beforehand.”
As if I were back in Whitehall the night of Elizabeth’s arrival, I heard that cryptic whisper: Il porte la marque de la rose.
I couldn’t rage anymore. I couldn’t fight. “Not until someone confirmed it for you,” I said. “That’s why you had Walsingham follow me, isn’t it? To see if he could catch me undressed. The mark on my skin, the mark called the rose—it would have proven everything.”
He inclined his head as though I’d offered him a compliment. “I have no further secrets from you. Now, we can