Her Last Assassin (39 page)

‘God speed then, sir!’ Essex clapped him on the back. ‘I shall write a note for the captain of the guards at the Tower. But you are a brave man to set foot inside the Tower again.’

The Tower might be a grim place, Goodluck thought, yet it is where Lucy lays her head each night. And where Lucy is, there I should be also.

Despite his wish to be near Lucy again, Goodluck had to admit to some trepidation as the barge neared the dark walled mound of the Tower. Only a few months ago he had been a prisoner here, and his beloved was still kept in this place against her will. The river was misty, the eerie sound of lapping water bouncing off stone. He stared up at the forbidding towers beyond the wall, saw a light burning steadily in one of the high window slits and wondered if it was Lucy’s cell. A shout went up inside as the barge came slowly in to moor alongside the damp, mossed steps that led up to the gate. A few moments passed while they waited, the barge bobbing uneasily back and forth, tugging at its ropes on a strong outgoing tide. Then a man came out in the livery of the Tower, carrying a lantern, and made his way down to the riverside.

‘No one is allowed to enter after dark without permission. Who are you? What is your business here?’

Goodluck jumped ashore and handed over the note he had brought from Lord Essex. The man read the note with a dour expression, then lifted his lantern, shining it full in Goodluck’s face.

‘Follow me,’ the man said shortly, and climbed back up the steps. ‘Though I do not know what the Constable of the Tower will say to this. Master Goodluck, is it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You’ve been here before.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘I have.’

‘Ah.’ The man looked back at him, his face unreadable in the long shadows of the watergate wall. ‘I daresay you’d know your own way then. But no one is permitted to walk unaccompanied here.’

He was led through the ancient gate and inside the Tower confines, then up the sloping track and past the green where he had been flogged before a watching crowd that had included Lucy herself. Now the place was empty, though a wooden platform still stood below the grey towers, as though awaiting its next victim.

Coming to a low door in one of the dark buildings that had loomed up through the mist, the man knocked and after a moment’s wait was admitted by an unseen guard. He turned and gestured Goodluck silently to follow him up the winding stair.

The stairway was narrow, lit only by the swaying light of the lantern. Goodluck knew he was not there as a prisoner this time. Yet this simple message had not been communicated to his heart, which beat sickeningly fast as he climbed the stone steps.

At the first turn of the stair, the man pushed open a studded door and pointed down a corridor that led into darkness.

‘This should serve your purpose. Though there is only one interrogator working tonight,’ he muttered. ‘Master Topcliffe.’

Master Topcliffe!

Goodluck halted, suddenly too unsteady to go on. At the mention of that dreaded name his knees had begun to buckle, his innards turning to water.

‘I …’ he began shakily, then saw the malicious gleam in his guide’s eyes and knew he was being mocked. How could he hope to be a man for Lucy when he could not even be a man for his own sake? ‘The name of the interrogator makes no odds to me. I am a servant of the Queen, as is he. Lead on, fellow.’

Two

I
T WAS VERY
late when footsteps came shuffling up the steps to her cell at the Tower, and someone began to unlock the heavy wooden door. Lucy turned without interest from the narrow window, through which she had been watching the bright flecks of torchlight reflected on the water, and the dark shape of a barge struggling slowly across the river currents as though intending to dock at the watergate. She did not bother to adjust her simple coif, for the place was dim enough at night to conceal any faults of face or attire. She had extinguished her candle stump some hours ago, and now the cell was lit only by a small fire burning in the grate, though its fuel would soon be exhausted and she knew there would be no more wood until tomorrow.

She ought to have been asleep, but she found her nights of captivity at the Tower more difficult than the days, and often put off retiring to bed as long as possible.

Carefully, Lucy sat to receive her jailor. She draped her lace shawl low across her shoulders so that its folds obscured her body, as was her custom with visitors these days.

Except the woman who entered was not Mistress Hall. Lucy stared, and felt slightly sick. She did not know what to say.

It was Cathy.

Her sombrely dressed jailor pushed past her former friend, who had halted on the threshold, staring back at her.

‘Not abed yet, Mistress Morgan?’ her jailer demanded, and glanced at the fire. ‘You will burn through your fuel allowance before time.’

There was a disapproving look on her face. More disapproving than was usual, Lucy noted, for Mistress Hall had the kind of turned-up nose and curling lip that always seemed to be sneering.

Lucy said nothing, staring past her at Cathy.

Mistress Hall motioned Cathy into the room, then turned to Lucy. ‘We have received orders from his lordship the Earl of Essex that you are to be provided with your own serving woman, to which end he has sent this woman, whose name is Mistress Belton, to wait on you and share your cell.’

Lucy’s throat constricted with anger and despair. Surely she had fallen asleep and this was a nightmare? Why would Lord Essex send a serving woman to tend her, and not just any maid, but the woman who had betrayed her to the Queen?

‘I shall arrange for a straw pallet to be brought up tonight for your bed,’ Mistress Hall was telling Cathy, her manner cold and unwelcoming. ‘The chest you brought will be sent up in the morning, when the Constable has checked its contents. If you wish for anything that cannot wait until my daily visit, you may knock upon the door to be released. There is a guard on the stair who will attend you.’

‘Thank you, Mistress Hall,’ Cathy murmured.

‘Goodnight,’ Mistress Hall told them both sharply, then slammed the door shut, locking it behind her.

They continued to stare at each other in silence for a moment, no sound in the room but the crackle of the miserable little fire, then Cathy took a few tentative steps forward.

Her face crumpled as she looked about the room, taking in the dusty floor with its stale rushes, the narrow window looking down to the river, the small grate with its wretched flames that barely kept the chill October draughts at bay.

‘Oh sweet Jesu,’ Cathy whispered, tears in her eyes, and fell to her knees before Lucy. ‘What have I done to you? My good friend, my dearest, truest Lucy.’

Lucy put out a hand to her friend. Then she drew it back slightly, on the edge of tears herself. There was only one question to ask. ‘Why did you betray me?’

She too was whispering, for she half suspected Mistress Hall to be listening at the door, and this was not a conversation she wished to share with her jailor.

‘What wrong had I ever done you?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me, Cathy, for I have searched my heart these past months, with nowhere to go but this room and the yard below, and have found no cause for your betrayal.’ She heard her voice quiver and was angry with herself for not being more controlled, but she could not seem to contain her turbulent emotions. ‘Was I too distant, perhaps? Did I neglect our friendship once I had been advanced at court? For I can think of no other reason that you should hate me so much.’

Cathy shook her head, weeping quietly. ‘You did me no wrong. It was not you who drove me to betray you, but his lordship, the Earl of Southampton. One of his spies told him that I have a son back home in Norfolk, and his lordship told me he would … He threatened to send men to my father’s farm and have James killed. He said it could be done this easily,’ she snapped her fingers brutally, her mouth trembling, ‘and made to look like an accident.’

‘Henry Wriothesley threatened to kill your son?’

‘If I did not help him.’ Cathy looked at her directly. ‘He made me follow you and note to whom you spoke, and when, and whether you met with any man privately. But I swear, I had not understood what he planned to do with the information.’

‘But you knew he wished me ill.’

‘Yes,’ Cathy agreed reluctantly.

‘Why did you not come to me with these threats? I might have been able to help you.’

‘Against the Earl of Southampton, a young man of fortune and nobility, favoured by the Queen herself?’ Cathy’s eyes were desperate. ‘We are only women. These noblemen hold the true power at court. And if his lordship had discovered my betrayal, my son would have died for it. I saw it in his eyes. He would have had James killed and thought nothing of it. I promise you, I had no choice.’

‘Rather my life than your son’s,’ Lucy murmured, thinking aloud, then nodded. ‘I cannot hold you to account for that.’

‘I knew the earl disliked you, I cannot deny it, though not how much. To condemn you to this …’ Her friend shuddered, glancing about the bare cell. ‘And because of that, I do not ask you to forgive me. For what I have done is unforgivable. But perhaps in time, knowing how much I love my son and that I acted only to protect his life, you may bring yourself to forget a little. Just a very little.’ Cathy hesitated. ‘Enough to trust me to be your servant again.’

Lucy folded her arms across her belly, unsure what her answer should be. Cathy had been her friend for many years – ever since they had been court entertainers together as girls, indeed – and she had not thought it possible that anything could come between them. But her betrayal had led to Lucy’s ruin and, worse, to Goodluck’s disgrace. He at least was free of this place, and so she was content with the four dreary walls of her prison, knowing he had escaped the same fate.

Yet could she now, given what she had been brought to, forget Cathy’s betrayal and accept her presence here?

‘Come.’ She held out her hands to Cathy, her mind made up. ‘I have wept too many nights, wondering how I wronged you. I do not wish to spend another night in tears now that I know the truth. Let us embrace each other as friends, not as servant and mistress. For we can be friends again in this grim chamber, a place where the court does not intrude, where we are equals before God.’

Stumbling to her feet, Cathy embraced her at once. They clung together, kissing each other affectionately, and soon Lucy found herself weeping despite her wish. It was the first time she had felt loving arms about her since the spring, when she had been arrested and brought to this dreadful place.

‘What is it?’ Cathy asked, seeing her tears. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No, I … I miss Goodluck, that is all.’

‘I heard Master Goodluck had been released, though I did not understand why. Was it to serve Lord Essex?’

Lucy nodded, unable to speak her mind, to explain why she was so distressed by Goodluck’s absence. It was not safe, not even with Cathy. Though now that she had a woman attending her, rather than seeing to her needs herself, it could not be very long before her secret was discovered.

Her friend stepped back, releasing her. She stared at Lucy in silence for a long moment, her face perplexed. Then her hand flew to her mouth. She glanced at the door as though suddenly afraid, then leaned forward, whispering hoarsely in Lucy’s ear, ‘You are with child, aren’t you?’

There, it was out. At long last, her secret was out.

Lucy sighed with a kind of terrified relief, then pulled aside the lacy shawl to reveal her too-tight bodice and the hard ball of her stomach below, pressing up under her ribs. She had loosened the stitches in her day gown herself, and widened the side panels by taking material from the underskirt, but it would be impossible to hide her state much longer. Any day now, Mistress Hall would stop making sharp comments on Lucy’s greedy habits, and notice that only her breasts and belly had enlarged over the summer, not the rest of her.

‘How far gone are you?’ Cathy asked, her face almost ghost-like with fear. No doubt she was imagining how the Queen would react to this news. For one of her ladies-in-waiting to lie with a man while unmarried was sin enough. But to conceive a child out of wedlock …

‘Seven months, by my count.’

‘And no one suspects?’

‘No one has come near enough to suspect, except for Mistress Hall, who accompanies me outside sometimes. And she merely thinks I have grown fat and sloth-like through over-indulgence,’ Lucy whispered, then lovingly stroked her swollen belly, ‘though it cannot be long before even she sees the truth.’

‘Does Master Goodluck know? He is the father, is he not?’

‘He is the father, yes. But I have not told him this. How could I? He might make some desperate attempt to be with me, or else to have me released, and I do not wish him to endanger himself.’ Lucy smiled, thinking of her absent lover. ‘He is such a good man, Cathy. The best man I have ever known.’

‘Lucy, I cannot imagine how you have suffered, alone in this place and concealing such a secret, even from the child’s father.’

‘It has not been so very hard as I feared,’ Lucy mused. ‘I have always enjoyed solitude, and although I dislike the unvarying confinement of this little room, I have grown to prefer my isolation to the perils of court life. Here at least I am safe from plots and counter-plots, from the many subtle intrigues that seemed to dog my steps at the Queen’s side. And so long as Goodluck is at liberty, I shall be at peace with myself. Though I admit that it has not always been easy, concealing my condition from those who guard me here.’