The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [69]
Elizabeth stood perfectly still. I watched her countenance darken. Then she whirled about, took a furious step toward the apartments’ main door.
“Your Grace,” I said.
She paused. “Don’t,” she said to me. “Don’t say it.”
“Listen.” I moved in front of her.
A dragging sound grew steadily louder, coming closer and closer.
“It’s the herbalist,” Sidney said, as if surprised; and as Barnaby leapt to the wall by the door, I drew Elizabeth behind the alcove curtains. I shielded her with my body, the dagger in my hand feeling insignificant as a toy. I tightened my hold, watching the apartment door open.
A stunted woman limped in. Her ankles contorted inward, displaying livid scars.
She paused in the center of the room.
“I told you, it’s the herbalist,” Sidney said again. Barnaby sagged with relief against the wall.
I looked closer. My entire world keeled.
Slowly, I stepped out of hiding. I knew it without needing to say a single thing, like a nail driven in my heart. All the blood in my veins seemed to empty. I saw no recognition in the withered face framed by an old-fashioned wimple—a leathery face, almost unrecognizable, scored by suffering. Even as I paused, all of a sudden, beset by a horrible, almost hopeful doubt, the scent of rosemary, of childhood, overcame me. I remembered what Peregrine had said:
He has that old nurse of his to take care of him.… She came here once … to fetch one of Edward’s spaniels.
I looked at her for an endless moment. Her eyes were bovine, dull in their resignation. I raised a trembling hand to her cheek, my fingers poised over her desiccated flesh. I was terrified of touching her, as if she were a mirage that might turn to dust. My heart pounded in my ears. If I hadn’t known it was true, that I was seeing her, here, in front of me, I would never have believed this was happening.
Not after all these haunted, grief-stricken years.
Behind me Elizabeth said, “You know her.”
And I heard myself reply, “Yes. Her name is Mistress Alice. She cared for me when I was a child. I was told she was dead.”
Silence ensued. Barnaby shut the door, planted himself in front of it.
I couldn’t take my eyes from her, couldn’t reconcile this brittle, ancient figure with the quick-witted woman enshrined in my memory. She’d always been spry, fleet of word and gesture; her eyes had been discerning, bright and keen, not these sunken hollow orbs.
She had left on a trip to Stratford, as she did every year. A few days to come and go, she’d said. Don’t fret, my pet. I’ll be back before you know it. But she didn’t come back. Thieves had beset her on the road: That’s what Master Shelton told me. I didn’t weep, didn’t ask to see her body or where she was buried. The pain was too intense. It hadn’t mattered. All that mattered was that she was gone. She was gone and she would never return to me. That’s what I’d been told. That’s what I believed. I was twelve years old and bereft of the one person in the world who had loved me. Her loss became an incurable wound that I hid deep within.
Now the question boiled inside me, with the force of an eruption.
Why? Why did you leave me?
But as I took in her appearance, I knew.
The scars on her ankles—I’d seen the same on mules condemned by unfeeling masters to a lifetime of hobbling about manacled, forced to turn the churning wheels of mills. I let my hand trail to her jaw, as I might soothe a frightened mare. Like a mare she understood. She opened her lips. Her mouth was dark inside. Defiled.
They had cut out her tongue.
A scream curdled in my throat. I choked it back as I heard Elizabeth utter, “Is this the woman who has been poisoning my brother?”
From the bed Sidney replied, “Yes. Lady Dudley brought her here … She gave her instructions, to make the treatments. But … she … she…”
“What?” Elizabeth snapped. “Spit it out!”
“Mistress Alice is a master herbalist,” I said. “She cured me of many illnesses in my childhood. She would never have done this willingly.”
Elizabeth pointed at her brother.