Maid of Deception (24 page)

“Nicolai Behari,” I said gently, reaching out to place my left hand on his arm. My right hand still held the gypsy’s gift, and it was all I could do not to hurl it into the shadows. Instead I patted the young Egyptian awkwardly. “You have my word. Sophia will be as safe as I can make her.”

Nicolai’s full upper lip curled. “What is the word of an Englisher to me, when you do not even understand the treasure you have in your own midst?” he said, his tone low and almost petulant. “You would just as soon my people leave your land, never to return.”

He had a point, but now was not the time to honor it. “You may remain in Salcey Forest as long as you are able, Nicolai, but tonight we must away. Let Alasdair carry Sophia back for us, that we might keep a fast pace,” I said. “I assure you we will get her safely home.”

“She will never be safely home in the middle of your English court,” muttered Nicolai, but he turned to Alasdair, offering up Sophia like a benediction. Alasdair leaned over and took the girl with equal deference, his hold on her protective and solicitous, and I felt a curious tightness in my chest.

I held my place, however, until Nicolai finally released Sophia’s trailing hand and turned back to me. “She is very special,” he said, his words so soft that only I could hear them. “Try to make sure no one realizes it, or she will never be free.”

We shared a long moment of silence. Then I nodded.

“I will,” I said.

Nicolai helped me up onto my own horse, waiting for me to settle into the sidesaddle before he stepped away. By the time I glanced back as we rode out of the clearing, he had already melted into the forest.

We arrived back at Marion Hall without anyone raising the alarm. Anna and Jane took a still-sleeping Sophia out of Alasdair’s arms, but when repeated attempts to rouse the girl were not met with success, it was quickly agreed that he should carry her into the house. If any of us were stopped, we’d have to make something up and quickly, but with any luck only the servants were still awake.

Alasdair seemed strangely disquieted by this last leg of our journey, his words now clipped and short, his manner rushed. This was just as well, however. We needed speed now most of all, and I was glad for him to hasten our steps.

I regarded my childhood home with a practiced eye, every winking flicker of light from the windows betraying a still-lit sconce or nighttime candle. The first glance caused only the slightest unease, but the second one stopped me cold, making Meg run flat into me.

“Oof!” She gasped out a short laugh, and was making to speak when I caught her arm and shushed her with a finger upon her lips. Her eyes went wide with curiosity, but I merely turned to the others.

“We’d best split up,” I said imperiously. “Our company is too large to go skulking through the house.” Alasdair turned on me quickly.

“No,” he said. “You all should—”

“Go—go!” I cut him off. “Meg and I will stroll around to the front entrance. If we’re seen, I can explain away a late-night walk with another maid in my own home easily enough. I can’t explain all six of us gamboling about.”

He clearly wasn’t pleased with this arrangement, but there was naught that any could offer to gainsay my logic, and with his last grumble of disapproval we parted company. I held Meg still until I saw our fellow skulkers disappear into a side entrance of Marion Hall, only the murmur of conversation between Alasdair and the servants disrupting the night.

“What are we doing?” Meg asked, peering at me through the gloom.

“Shh,” I said, pulling her along toward the far end of the house, below the western drawing room. “I thought I saw something back here, where there should be no one at all.”

“And we’re going to seek it out?” she asked. “Without weapons or a brawny guard or two?” Her teeth flashed in the moonlight. “Excellent.”

“I said be still,” I hissed, pausing as we came around another corner. My steps had slowed now, my eyes straining to see into the gloom to where I swore I saw . . .

And there it was.

A light flickered in the tiny window at the very base of the hall, above what I knew to be the old wine cellar. Old, as in empty, as in a chamber nobody ever used anymore. Not even for storage, though once upon a time it had provided an excellent cool, dry location to ensure that wine aged to its fullest taste.

“What is that?” Meg asked, following the direction of my gaze.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but where there are lights, there are generally people.”

“In your cellar?” She frowned.

“In my cellar.” I slanted her a look. “And we did gain several new guests this evening. Perhaps they were guests in need of a quiet place for a conversation.”

Meg grinned in the gloom. “Well, that seems promising, but how can we get in there? Not through that tiny window, certainly.”

“Not quite, but—come with me.” I took her by the arm, and we hastened through the darkness, moving past the row of windows and into a shadowed lee of Marion Hall. A cellar door there lay hidden in the tall grass, and I fished on my belt for the right key. It was the same key as opened every cellar lock in the hall, and it didn’t fail me here. The door gave way with a dry, crumbly
woof
of air, and I thanked the craftsman for his choice of timber and fastenings. The wall was not at all the worse for its age or the several bad winters I’d heard tell of in the servants’ quarters. Instead a spiraling staircase curved down into the darkness, hewn from the rock itself.

Without hesitating, Meg started down the steps, and it was all I could do to follow her into that pitch-dark space. She clucked with pleasure as she scampered ahead of me, waiting with barely concealed excitement as the low hum of men’s voices swam toward us. “They are talking plainly, so sure they are that they will not be discovered,” she whispered
happily as I descended the stairs and landed next to her. “My favorite kind of mark.”

“Shh,” I warned, and she sobered. “There are spy holes built into the cellar room. My father had no sooner taken out all the wine than he realized he now had the greatest room possible for visitors to speak with absolute certainty that they would not be overheard. So of course he wanted to make well sure he could hear them.”

I reached for Meg’s hand, and we walked through the darkness, toward the raised voices. We positioned ourselves in a tight corner, one of the many fissures that had been cut into the walls to allow someone to peer into the space. Some of these fissures had already existed, cut by the same baron who’d built Marion Hall. Though their purpose was not certain, both my father and I had always speculated that either the good baron had thought his servants were stealing his wine or the room had once been used for something other than simple libations. We’d crafted many a tale of secret negotiations in these hidden rooms, with King and country depending on a loyal patriot pledged in aid of the Crown.

And here we were this night, about to embark on a fell plot not too far removed from those childhood imaginings.

Meg and I fit our eyes to the tiny holes, both of us as still as mice. The room beyond was lit up like full day, and though all of the men were cloaked except for Cecil and Walsingham, their speech branded them as Scots, bristling with the thick inflections of their homeland. I gave Meg a quizzical look at their heavy accents, but she just grinned and nodded. She could understand these men, or at least memorize their
words. Still, to hear more effectively she adjusted her stance and placed her ear to her spy hole, while I leaned close and refit my right eye to mine.

And that’s when it happened.

The door at the far end of the room opened, allowing one last man to enter the chamber, cloaked as all the rest, his shoulders broad, his walk assured. The others turned his way but did not acknowledge him, and he took his place by the door, clearly a guard of some sort who had just assured that their secrecy was absolute. He was dressed in the same dun-colored garb I’d seen the Lords’ guards wear throughout their stay in Windsor. If I hadn’t seen the man move, I wouldn’t even have noticed him, most likely.

But I
had
seen him move. And I knew that walk.

For reasons I could not begin to fathom, Alasdair MacLeod had just joined the secret meeting of Scots and English advisors. And he’d breathed to me not a word about it.

I struggled to make sense of his presence in the cellar room. He was the one who’d told me in the first place about the arrival of the additional guests to Marion Hall. Why? Did he know that I would hear about it anyway, and seek to twist the information for his own benefit? But why agree to travel with us to find Sophia, when he knew such an important meeting was to take place this night?

And, again, what was he
doing
here? And how dare he get angry with me for
anything
, as he had in the western drawing room, since he was perpetrating a lie under my nose as a part of the very Lords of the Congregation upon whom I was supposed to spy!

How could I have missed this connection!

The words of the Scotsmen washed over us like water then for several minutes, and one thing was certain. These were definitely the Lords of the Congregation. There was even the young Earl of Arran, whom I identified only because he eventually dropped his cowl, complaining of heat. The earl was the man whom Cecil had helped bring safely back home from France. He wandered near Alasdair, and I stiffened, pressing my eye so closely to the wall, I was surprised no one sensed the very rafters watching them. But the two men did not speak, and the Lords themselves argued much and decided little, most of it focusing on how much aid the Queen would send in arms and men.

Gradually, however, despite my focus on Alasdair, I became aware of another sound in the distance, a scrape and a shuffle—not constant, but just often enough to seem like someone was repositioning himself or herself much the same as Meg and I were.

Perplexed, I peered off down the corridor. Meg pulled back from the wall and frowned at me, but I motioned for her to return to her task while I stood away from the spy hole, smoothing my dress down resolutely.

Only one person knew the Hall so well as I did. And only one person would also know where to stash a half dozen foreigners who’d come to speak with the Queen’s most trusted advisors, in such a way that he could spy on their entire conversation, breath by bloody breath.

My father.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I slipped off my boots and moved down the corridor. Questions crowded in upon me. What had Father learned so far by spying on the Queen’s men and the foreign diplomats that Meg and I had missed? And what would he do with the information he was gaining?

And perhaps most important,
did he realize that Alasdair was also in that room
?

If it had been any person other than my father, I would have suspected that his interest in the Lords of the Congregation lay solely in the idea of learning something that was clearly intended to be secret. Such was the way of a courtier—knowledge was power in our enclosed society. And the grander the secret the more powerful it was. But power was profitable only if you chose to wield it. And, given that the holder of this information was my father, I had no doubt but that he planned to sell it to the highest bidder.

A dozen possibilities assaulted me as I crept along the corridor, virtually soundless in my stocking feet. Was my father also a spy for the Queen?

This option I discarded immediately; it was simply ludicrous, and my father was too often out of royal favor for him to be considered a favorite of Elizabeth’s.

So, failing that, was my father hoping to improve his position in society by learning something of import? Would he slip this information to the Queen at some informal meal over the next few days, or wait until we had all returned to Windsor?

Or indeed did he have in mind some other group entirely—perhaps one loyal to France, or perhaps one sympathetic to the Catholic cause? Would my father help defend or support a cause that would get him labeled a traitor?

He already was in a tangle up to his ears with Travelers on his property. If anyone learned that he knowingly allowed a group of “filthy Egyptians” to squat on his land, his life already was forfeit. But would he go yet a step further and engage in deliberate treason?

How well did I know my father, anyway?

So intent was my thinking that I almost plowed right into the man as he knelt awkwardly on the packed dirt floor, his head canted at an odd angle to gain a better view into the room beyond. When he realized he was no longer alone, I saw him take a deep breath, hold it, and then let it out with the air of a soldier willing to face his destiny.

Then he turned and saw me. His eyes widened, and he grinned.

“Bea—” he began, but I held up a sharp hand, unwilling to speak until I drew near to him. I tiptoed up and hissed into his ear, for once not bothering to hide my fury:

“What in God’s name are you doing here?”

Father jolted back, surprise and amusement still evident on his face. “I could ask the same of you,” he whispered back, “but I doubt I’d like the answer. Now hush and take the next position.” He indicated another set of spy holes. The Lords of the Congregation would be ill-amused to learn their hidden cupboard had walls that were more like windows.