Lady Gallant (6 page)

Nora looked down at the wriggling velvet. "Arthur, I'm not sure about this."

"Mastiffs are valuable, my lady. These two, when they're big, will rest their forepaws on a man's shoulders."

Smiling at the boy's enthusiasm, Nora gave one of his blond locks a tug. He was a sweet, lively boy, who'd been orphaned like her brood in the wicket. She'd met him one day two years ago, when she'd been home at the estate where her father had exiled her. Her bailiff had hauled Arthur before her, bruised and bleeding, and accused him of stealing bread from the kitchens and, even worse, a book. It had taken her hours to pry the story of his destitution from the boy. His parents were dead from the sweat. At only seven years, he was too young to be of use to anyone in the fields, so he survived in the scullery of her house, scrubbing pots and living on scraps. His empty stomach pained him so that he hadn't been able to resist the bread. The book he was unable to read, but he longed to see what written words looked like. That day Arthur became her page, and Nora had someone besides herself to care for.

Leaving Arthur to tend the puppies, she went back to her closet alone. There she settled on a cushion to finish an important task that had to be done before she could leave the palace later that morning. From her sleeve she withdrew a scrap of paper and folded it small enough to fit beneath a gold clothing ornament. Taking up a perfumed glove of kid, she placed the paper beneath the ornament and rested both in place within the embroidered design on the cuff of the glove. She sewed the ornament to the leather, making sure the paper was invisible.

When the last stitch was tied off, she summoned her maid and donned a black dress trimmed sparingly with silver lace from a gown she'd outgrown several years before. Fastening her best cloak about her shoulders, she set out alone for an abandoned privy garden in the palace grounds. Once there, she wandered aimlessly amid shrubs clipped into geometric shapes and rare flowers about to bloom, while playing with her glove.

At this time of day few courtiers were about to witness her passage, and not many servants. Nora strolled to a corner of the garden and perched on a crumbling stone bench. Her hand fell to her side, hidden by the thick billows of her skirt, and she dropped the newly sewn glove behind the bench. After gazing into the morning sky for a few moments, she rose and wandered over to a fountain where a naked cherub poured water from a shell. She listened to the gurgling waterfall for a while, then walked slowly back to the door to the palace.

As she opened the door she looked over her shoulder to see one of the gardeners kneel by the old bench and poke at a weed growing beneath it. He picked up the glove and stuffed it in his shirt. Nora nodded to herself in satisfaction and left the garden.

She hadn't been a spy for long. Only since that day a few months ago when she'd witnessed a burning. The Queen burned heretics, and at Smithfield a crowd had gathered to witness the latest spectacle. The heretic was a girl. She couldn't have been over fourteen, and Nora heard from someone in the crowd that she was an ignorant farm girl who hadn't been able to answer the bishops' questions about the meaning of the Mass.

Nora arrived in Smithfield as the flames were licking at the girl's face. The gunpowder meant to explode before she suffered too greatly hadn't ignited, and she was screaming through singed lips. The skin over her belly burst open, and her entrails spilled out. Nora, in a party of the nobility, fell to the ground in a faint with the sweet smell of burning flesh in her nostrils.

Until that day Nora had been a dutiful subject, loyal to the sovereign. Queen Mary was a Catholic and determined to bring England back to the old church. At least half the kingdom was still Catholic, but London and its environs were stuffed with Protestants. Mary was a good woman, but heresy was the ultimate sin to her. She punished it as did her husband, the King of Spain, by fire. All this Nora knew, but she hadn't understood the horror of burning. That night, half-drunk on wine and in bed but unable to sleep, Nora changed.

Her life had been filled with atonement for her own birth, and with duty and obedience. Something within her rebelled that night. Her conscience sought answers from God, and when the sun rose, she had them. Whatever the church said, Christ would never condone the obscene cruelty of burning. The Queen was wrong. The Catholic kings of Spain and France were wrong.

But the Queen was the Queen. Hope lay with her sister, the tolerant and brilliant Elizabeth. Princess Elizabeth was a suspected heretic, but Mary couldn't burn her for fear of inviting her own death. For years the fanatic Catholics at court had urged Mary to cut off her sister's head. Elizabeth needed help.

As one of the Queen's women, Nora often heard snips and bits of gossip, whispers of plots. Certain some of this news would be helpful to Elizabeth, she sought out the Princess's friend Sir William Cecil on one of his rare visits to court. Brilliant and devious as his mistress, Cecil at first rejected Nora's overtures. When she persisted in seeking him out clandestinely, he became convinced of her sincerity and told her he'd be glad for her help. So now, whenever she heard something, she put her information in a cipher, concealed it in her glove, and left it in the garden. Eventually the cipher got to Cecil, and the glove was returned.

Today her cipher contained news of a hunt for three heretics, writers of scurrilous ballads and pamphlets that lampooned the Queen, her foreign husband, and her burnings. One of them, Archibald Dymoke, had called the Queen Bloody Mary.

From the garden Nora returned to her room to collect Arthur, the puppies, and her maid. The three of them went down to the courtyard, where a coach awaited them. A groom handed Nora in, then boosted Arthur inside. Next came the basket and her maid. Nora pulled her cloak tight around her shoulders, then straightened her spine.

"I hope you're right about mastiffs," she said to Arthur. "I truly hope you're right."

After their dance before the Queen, Christian helped Nora Becket settle on a cushion. He felt no remorse at having tormented her. It served her right for keeping him swollen with lust for days. Even when he'd been furious at her for thwarting his revenge on Jack Midnight, he'd wanted her. It was the way she covered herself from neck to toe. All that shrouding made him want to tear off her clothes to see what she was like beneath.

Some women wore their innocence like a halberd, he mused. Women like Nora. He preferred an honest bawd, one who served beer and meat in an open-necked gown with her breasts exposed in invitation. In the years since his father had found him again, he'd had his fill of noblewomen who eyed his codpiece from behind their fans and sent cloying notes to him, begging for an assignation.

No matter their station, women wanted him for his beauty, a beauty that had caused him more pain than pleasure. None could see the patchwork creature that capered in the disguise of an earl's son. He was both wool and satin, felt and velvet, knitted together with threads of gold and a good bit of frayed twine.

Rejoining his friends, Christian deliberately took part in a card game with Roger Mortimer so that he could sit with his back to the girl everyone called the mouse and who he knew was no mouse at all, but a phoenix. He was winning a fortune from the old Marquess of Winchester when Edmund Bonner was announced. A couple of men hissed behind their hands, another man muttered a curse, and some of the Queen's council looked as if they'd like to spit.

Bloody Bonner, the people called him. Bishop of London, burner of heretics. Roger Mortimer had told Christian that Bonner had just sentenced an aged cobbler for heresy. The old man was ignorant; he didn't know the Mass from a bushkin. Christian turned sideways in his chair to watch Bonner waddle up to the Queen. He was so fat, his skin looked like it was in danger of splitting. Sweat dripped from beneath his cap, down his bulging cheeks, and into the neck of his robe. Christian yawned, tossed a card on the table, and through half-lowered lashes stared at the papers Bonner carried.

After presenting the papers to the Queen, Bonner signaled to the servant who followed him. The man came forward with a lap desk and held it for the Queen. Mary glanced at the sheets of paper, then signed them while talking to the bishop.

A man who had entered with Bonner suddenly turned and caught Christian watching the group. Moonlight-silver hair curled over his ears. In spite of his lean build and prowling wolf eyes, Luiz de Ateca managed to convey imperial power and splendor in his dress and demeanor. De Ateca smiled a gloating smile at Christian and bowed. Christian turned back to his cards.

Bonner retrieved the signed papers from the Queen, and he and his party left the presence chamber. Luiz de Ateca followed, but stopped beside Christian.

"You weren't at Mass."

Christian threw down a card, but didn't look up at de Ateca. "I worship at home."

"If at all," de Ateca said. "It's unseemly for the Queen's great nobles to absent themselves from court Mass."

"Do you keep count of our absences and send word to His Majesty? How tedious, Spaniard. And how expected."

De Ateca's hand slipped to the hilt of his sword. He threw back the edge of his cloak and sneered at Christian.

"Do you think I like being exiled on this barbaric and backward island? I could be fighting in the Netherlands or in France."

Christian laid down his cards and clicked his tongue in sympathy. "And instead you're forced to roost here on this miserable little island and seduce boys." His hand snaked out to grasp de Ateca's arm before the man could draw his dagger. "Careful. If you challenge, the Queen will want to know the cause of our wrangle."

The Spaniard lifted his hand away from the weapon. His face was crimson with the effort to control his rage.

"Leave English youths alone for your own health," Christian said. "From now on choose older prey who can take care of themselves."

De Ateca smiled.

"I tried, but you wriggled out of my trap." With a lightness of step that belied the anger in his eyes, de Ateca left the presence chamber.

Unruffled by the exchange, Christian returned to his card play, but whatever was in Bishop Bonner's documents had put the Queen out of temper. She retreated to her privy chamber, and her women went with her. Christian looked up from his bow in time to glimpse the small, intriguing back of Nora Becket before it vanished. Roger Mortimer sidled up to him.