The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [99]
“I’m tired, is all,” I managed to utter. “Thank you for indulging me. I cannot begin to tell Your Majesty how much it has meant.”
“Oh, I enjoyed it. It has been far too long since I thought of my late aunt. Perhaps one day you’ll consider penning a family history for me. I’d happily commission it.” She wagged her finger. “I daresay it would keep you from less-reputable sources of income.”
“I would be honored.” I forced out a smile, glad of the dimness in the room. “I should like to retire awhile, by your gracious leave.”
“Of course.” She held out her hand. As I bowed low she said, “I believe I owe your current employers an answer. Come back tomorrow, and let’s see if I can arrange one.”
“Your Majesty.” I kissed her dry, bejeweled fingers.
Rochester led me to a building off the bailey. There was a trough in the quadrangle where I could bathe and a room upstairs with the essentials. I stripped to my hose, careful to keep them above my hips as I washed in the mossy water, then went up and closed the door.
A cold meal waited on the table. I had no appetite, wondered if I ever would again. Still, I tied back my damp hair and ate my fill. The needs of the body rarely care about the desolation in the heart.
After eating, I sat on the edge of the straw-filled cot and removed the jewel from my bag again. It shone like a fragment of a star. I marveled that I could have mistaken it for anything else. I ran a fingertip along a sculpted vein, as if it were alive, knowing now how far it had traveled to reach me, across the Channel from France, through a cherished lifetime. I looked down to my concave groin, and to the left, to the hip which bore my own mother’s birthmark.
The only ones who would have known of it are those who were intimate with the late duchess’s person.…
Charles of Suffolk’s … squire came to see me. A stalwart man …
I closed my eyes. I had to rest. I slid the jewel into my cloak lining and pulled the coarse linen bedsheet over me.
As I drifted off to sleep, I thought Kate would be as surprised as me when she learned the jewel was not a petal, but a leaf.
Chapter Twenty-six
I dreamed of angels. To the echo of a soaring chorus, I opened my eyes and found the room submerged in night. A fiery glow flickered from the open window. I sat upright. The singing came from outside. Then I saw the figure in the room with me.
“Barnaby? Is that you?”
“Yes. I hope you don’t mind. I let myself in.” He stood with arms wrapped about his chest, staring out. “Did you make your appointment?” he asked, without looking around to me.
“Yes. I brought your bow back.” I paused. “Where’s Peregrine?”
“Fast asleep. He eats like the famished and drops like a stone. Come, look at this.”
Pulling on my breeches, I padded barefoot to the window.
Indigo sky canopied the castle. An improvised altar had been set up in the bailey, draped in faded crimson sporting threadbare gold crucifixes. Before it stood a white-robed figure, holding aloft a chalice; banked about the altar were beeswax tapers, their wavering flames casting incandescent light upon the uplifted faces of men and women who kneeled in rapt silence. Perfumed smoke gusted from censers. The refrains of a hymn rose upward from a choir of children assembled on crates.
I saw Mary seated on a chair, a garnet rosary twined in her hands. The gems captured the candlelight, scattered it like blood drops across her dress.
“By God, she is secure of her victory,” said Barnaby. “We can only hope this is all she’ll make us suffer of her papist rites.”
Mesmerized by the scene’s eerie strangeness, I said, “I’ve never seen the old ways before. They’re quite beautiful, in truth.”
“For you, perhaps. To those of us who’ve seen heretics burn in France and Spain, it’s not so pretty a sight.” Barnaby turned into the room. There were no shutters or panes on the window, so I could only turn about as well and watch him pace.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “I want to do her honor as my queen, but already she brings out altars and burns incense, just as they warned us she would.” He looked at