NINETEEN

Elizabeth was snappish and irritable as July progressed under serenely sunny skies. The weather was oppressively hot and she could hardly wait to leave Richmond for the cooler North. By the time she left, Walsingham assured her, the Nightingale mastermind would be in the Tower—she assumed, if he could not positively identify either of the LeClerc brothers he would simply throw them both into prison and sort it out in the aftermath—and upon her return to London Elizabeth could begin to contemplate her future without even an absent husband to consider.

Against Walsingham’s advice, Elizabeth granted a brief audience to Nicolas and Julien LeClerc the day after their arrival at court. “If one of them is bent on killing me, I should like to look him in the eye,” she snapped at her Lord Secretary, and so he stood behind her throne today, no doubt glaring balefully at the Frenchmen.

Dr. Dee and Lucette attended them, and Elizabeth greeted the doctor warmly. “I trust you have brought back many fine books for my libraries,” she teased. “I shall look forward to examining them in future.”

To Lucette, she merely nodded in acknowledgment of the girl’s curtsey. She had noted yesterday this new composure of Lucette’s—disconcertingly like her mother’s when Minuette had been keeping secrets from Elizabeth. The queen was in no doubt that Lucette’s emotions had been engaged by the brothers, though she showed no obvious signs of affection toward her supposed-intended.

Nicolas and Julien LeClerc were clearly brothers, with a marked similarity of colouring and features, but also undoubtedly individual. Nicolas a shade darker of hair and carrying more weight, Julien taller and grimmer. She suspected Julien would have a dashing smile, but it showed no evidence today.

The men bowed and rose at her gesture. “So,” she said sternly, “what is this about wishing to remove one of my favorite subjects from England?”

“Your Majesty,” replied Nicolas in accented English, “I doubt any force short of heaven could persuade Mademoiselle Courtenay to abandon her allegiance to Your Grace.”

Elizabeth sniffed, not displeased. “Still, as you have not yet obtained the Duke of Exeter’s permission, I suppose I need not worry overmuch. I am not certain there is a man on earth to whom Dominic Courtenay would willingly entrust Lucette.”

Through the banter, neither Julien nor Lucette moved, hardly even blinked. Without showing the least outward sign, somehow Elizabeth knew that they two were powerfully, almost painfully, aware of the other.

Interesting, she mused afterward. Lucette fell in love in France, all right—but not with the man she’s linked to now.

She found the problem mildly diverting until, with a suddenness that shocked her, there was another assassination attempt.

In her oft-threatened years as queen, there had never been two so close together. The second attempt was not a direct physical threat such as the man with the misfiring pistol had been, but the more subtle and disconcerting use of poison.

It had been planted in her drink—a cup of sack, the dry Spanish wine sweetened with sugar—brought to the tennis courts where Elizabeth was the center of a crowd watching Brandon Dudley and Kit Courtenay play. The queen had a small round table next to her canopied seat on which sat a variety of treats. Of course, like all royals, Elizabeth had a taster. Nothing came within her reach that had not been tested on someone less exalted. Nothing had ever happened, as usually nothing ever did. This was England, after all, not Italy.

But this time the drink had not been set down for five minutes when there were shouts from the kitchen buildings and then the running feet of guards, with Walsingham in black swooping among them like a crow of foreboding. Elizabeth rose, expecting violence, but the guards surrounded not her, but her refreshments. Bewildered, she met Walsingham’s eyes as he reached her and, forgetful for once of status, ran frantic hands down her arms.

“Are you well?” he demanded urgently.

“Yes, of course, what has—”

In the rarest form of discourtesy, he turned away while she was still speaking and seized the goblet. “You did not touch this?” he asked her brusquely. His face was pale.

Understanding began to dawn. “No,” she said softly, “I have not. Who has?”

But with the knowledge that his queen was not about to fall dead at his feet, Walsingham gained control of himself and the situation. “Let us walk,” he urged her.

She allowed herself to be led away, the two of them flanked by armed guards. “Poison?” she asked, voice carefully pitched so as not to carry beyond the knot of guards.

He nodded grimly. “Your taster collapsed within minutes of the drink leaving the kitchens. She was dead when she fell.”

“Nightingale?” Elizabeth asked.

“It must be.”

“Nicolas LeClerc was at the tennis match, sitting not ten feet away from me for the last hour.”

“Whoever did this will have taken care to be blamelessly elsewhere. They pay men to do their dirty work.”

“But?”

“I already have men turning out the chambers of the LeClerc brothers. If they are lucky, evidence will be forthcoming.”

“How would that be lucky for them?”

“For one of them, at least—the innocent one. If I do not find evidence, then both of them will be locked up by nightfall.”

Elizabeth shivered once, seized by that feeling of someone walking on her grave. Not yet, she told the shadows firmly. Death cannot have me yet. Not for many long years, and not by violence.

—

Julien did not attend the tennis match. He was moodily alone in his chamber—a tiny rectangle that at least he did not have to share with Nicolas, and certainly cleaner than his rented space in Paris—when the door was flung wide and a man in clerkly black flanked by two guards rasped, “On your feet. Don’t touch anything.”

Slowly, Julien rose to his feet from where he’d lain stretched full-length on the bed, jerkin unlaced over his shirt, boots tossed carelessly on the floor.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“For you to stand still in the corridor and go nowhere.” The man stepped aside for Julien to exit the chamber, but the guards remained in place. No doubt to keep him from fleeing. Every inner alarm that had kept him alive so long in a dangerous profession was ringing, but he knew how to feign ease.

Even the most thorough search couldn’t last long, for there was nothing in the chamber except the bed, a chair, and Julien’s trunk. The clerk (or whatever he was) removed everything from the trunk, shaking out the clothes, running his hands along the interior looking for secret hiding places, then swiftly dismantled the bed and mattress. He was too well-trained to express frustration, but there did seem to be a remoteness to his face when he finally conceded there was nothing to find.

He faced Julien, speculation writ large in his eyes, and said, “Walsingham wants to see you. The guards will take you.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t care to tell me why?”

“You suppose correctly.”

Julien whistled tunelessly, more to settle his nerves than annoy the guards. They marched him through the Richmond corridors to another in what he assumed would be a series of rather anonymous meeting places for Walsingham.

Instead he ended up being directed into what could only be the primary office of England’s Lord Secretary, an imposing chamber decorated to awe. Even Walsingham looked more substantial, the intelligencer in him subsumed by England’s premier politician and one of the two most powerful men in England.

“Wait outside,” he told the guards. When they closed the door behind them, he turned curtly to Julien. “Sit.”

Julien took a seat across the desk from Walsingham, wary at the anger in his voice. Walsingham rarely let any emotion show. Something was very wrong.

“What has happened?”

“A woman is dead, here in the palace precincts.”

“Who?” Despite himself, Julien couldn’t help the spurt of fear. There were lots of women at Richmond, there was no reason to think anything had happened to Lucie…

“The queen’s taster.”

Relief meant it took him a few seconds to put it all together. “The taster…Poison?”

“The queen,” Walsingham said repressively, “is perfectly safe. Clearly God is watching over her life.”

“That man you sent to search my belongings—you believe I did this?”

“I did not want to believe it. I have never wanted to believe you have betrayed me.”

“He found nothing, you must know that. Though I grant that doesn’t prove much. Surely you don’t think me stupid enough to keep incriminating evidence in my own chamber.”

“I had to look.”

“Fine,” Julien said. “You looked. You found nothing. So why are you speaking to me like you think me guilty?”

“We found the poisoner, with his throat cut, in one of Windsor’s less traveled wings. He still had the vial of poison with him, along with a single seal of command.”

Walsingham produced it from nowhere, like a court entertainer, and held it in his palm for Julien to see.

It was a scrap of paper, two inches square, with a coloured picture of a seal. Julien expected to see a nightingale.

But it was not a bird. It was a cinquefoil—shaded blue. Truth and loyalty.

Julien just stared, shocked beyond measure. His personal badge planted on the poisoner could mean only one thing: he was being deliberately set up.

“Julien LeClerc.” Walsingham rose, his black robes and chain of office settling around him like judgment incarnate. “I hereby arrest you on the charge of murder of an innocent and the attempted assassination of Queen Elizabeth. You will be taken to the Tower to answer for this and any other charges that may follow.”

Before Julien could think of a single thing to say—or how to make his mouth work even if he could think of something—the guards opened the door behind him. They were apologizing to Walsingham, but Julien understood only one voice—Lucette’s.

“What have you done to him?” she was demanding as she swept into the room, and then he was on his feet and turned toward her.

She was white-faced, but with fury rather than fear. Or maybe it was both. After one look at Julien, she turned her formidable focus on Walsingham. “What are you doing?”

“Arresting him for trying to kill Queen Elizabeth,” Walsingham responded flatly. “You should not be here, my lady.”

Julien waited for her to defend him, or to question him. To do anything except stand there and stare at Julien as though she were trying to read the secrets of his very soul.

But all she did was, at last, ask him softly, “Did you do this?”

He’d never thought he could be so hurt by a question.

But why wouldn’t she believe Walsingham? She had little reason to trust him.

And yet it was suddenly the most important thing in the world that she should trust him. The Tower, interrogation, the threat of torture, the knowledge that someone had set him up…all of that faded. Only one thing in the world mattered—that this woman believe him.

“I did not,” he told her firmly, even while the guards gripped him by the arms and prepared to lead him away. “Please, Lucie, you must trust me. I have never threatened the life of your queen. I would not do that to you.”

They pulled him out of the chamber, leaving him with the image of Lucie’s face, blue eyes wide and unreadable. He had no idea if she believed him or not.

—

Lucette had known instantly that something was dreadfully wrong. When guards draw away the queen and sequester her food and drink, one does not have to look far for the cause. She shook off Nicolas as soon as she could possibly manage, because from the moment she’d seen the guards surround the queen, her heart had been pounding out a single question: Where is Julien?

After a frantic search and the heart-droppingly bad moment when she’d found Julien in the midst of being arrested in Walsingham’s office, she made her way blindly back to her chamber. Ignoring her expensive skirts, she sat on the bed with arms wrapped around her legs. She knew she should be thinking fast and hard—indeed, one level of her mind already was whirring away at important threads—but all she could focus on was Julien’s plea: I would not do that to you.

To you: why did it matter so much more that his care was for her opinion? That even if he’d been so inclined, he would not have moved to assassinate Queen Elizabeth because of what hurt that might cause Lucette?

But she did not have time for self-indulgence. Beneath her terror for Julien, her mind had been nagging at her, wanting her to focus. So she did what she always did: closed her eyes, entered the library in her mind, and opened the ledger relating to Nightingale.

She turned to a blank page and waited, fingertips resting on the paper so that she could almost fancy she felt its smoothness. Her mind was like a separate entity, whirring away below her focus. Don’t force it, don’t coax it, don’t pay it the slightest attention and then, like magic, it resolved.

From the beginning this case had vibrated with much more than simple conspiracy or fanaticism. There had been a venom to it, a corrosive hatred that had contaminated nearly every piece of circumstantial evidence. If Walsingham had arrested Julien, she believed it was because of evidence, hard evidence. The kind of evidence manufactured and planted. And there was only one person in all of this who hated Julien.

Nicolas was the Nightingale mastermind. She had believed it before—now she knew it for fact. She might not have every piece—motive, beyond that of screwing his brother, was still out of her grasp—but it didn’t matter. Like mathematics, it was the only answer. The elegant answer.

And no one but her would believe it.

She’d been half expecting Walsingham to drag her back to his office for close questioning, but when the summons came, Lucette instead followed the guards directly to the queen’s privy chamber.

“You may go.” When the queen dismissed the guards, it was only Elizabeth and Lucette, facing each other across five feet of polished marble floor that might as well have a been a fathomless chasm for how far apart they were.

At last, after a deliberately uncomfortable minute of waiting, Lucette curtsied to her queen.

Elizabeth tipped her head in challenge. Her eyes glittered. “Do you have nothing to say about this attack?”

“You are clearly unharmed.” Where was she getting the nerve to be rude? Perhaps, she thought, I am finally reacting to Elizabeth’s forced intimacy. If she wants me to be family, then she’ll have to deal with all my flaws.

“My taster is not unharmed. She is dead.”

Lucette blinked away her instinctive sympathy for the unknown woman. “And what do you want with me?”

“An apology perhaps. You have delivered a killer straight into the heart of my court.”

Lucette knew she had to walk a very careful path. “Nicolas was with me, as you well know.”

“Julien was not.”

“Is that the only reason for Julien’s arrest—because he wasn’t fortunate enough to have someone vouch for his whereabouts?”

“Walsingham has evidence. And no doubt more will be forthcoming once Julien is properly questioned in the Tower.”

Lucette shoved away her too-vivid imagination of what such questioning might entail, for she could not help Julien if she collapsed into a puddle of tears.

“Has Nicolas been told of his brother’s arrest?”

“His chamber was searched along with Julien’s. I imagine he is well aware of what has happened.”

“And will you—or Walsingham—require Nicolas’s continuing presence at court for now?”

“You would send him away?”

Lucette raised a cool, interrogatory eyebrow, hoping she did it as well as Elizabeth. “We are expected at Wynfield Mote in four days.”

She managed to surprise Elizabeth to the extent that the queen laughed in astonishment. “What a cool head you have! One brother arrested, and you seek to introduce the other to your family? Not to mention my daughter, who is currently at Wynfield.”

“Do you have any reason to suspect Nicolas? No doubt Walsingham would have thrown him in the Tower if he had the slightest misgivings.”

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “How hardhearted you are, Lucette. I will take it under advisement. You may go for now. No doubt Walsingham will wish to speak with you at further length.”

She didn’t say no. Lucette clung to that, instinctively knowing that the only way to get to the end of this muddle was to convince Nicolas he was safe. Best to get him away from Elizabeth, too—but Lucette admitted that her primary motive was to do whatever she had to do to discover the truth of Nicolas’s treachery. Lie to her queen, lie to her family, seduce Nicolas (or allow him to seduce her in whatever manner he had perfected since his injuries)—she would do whatever was necessary.

She would bring Nicolas down to set Julien free.

3 August 1580

To Her Royal Highness Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and France:

The nightingale’s song will soon wake you from your long slumber. Be prepared to fly free.

The rush of being so near to freedom drove Mary to restless action and imprudent conversation. She knew she was dancing on the edge of disaster, but then she had always felt most alive at such moments. Stephen Courtenay was a willing partner to her reckless mood, indulging her without open encouragement. But she could see that her rising passion sparked something in him in return.

Summoned to her presence chamber on a rainy afternoon that closed in around Tutbury as though enforcing her hated imprisonment, Stephen joined her in circling the large room. As always she chose the subject of conversation. “So your sister is to bring one of her Frenchmen home. How lovely for your family to host such an illustrious guest at the same time as the Princess of Wales. Do you not regret not being with them all?” Did he know how lucky he was to be teased by Mary Stuart? Few men had had the privilege.

He answered equably enough, rather maddening for a woman not averse to being flirted with, “I am content to do my duty.”

“Am I merely a duty?” she asked archly. “Or dare I hope you take some pleasure in my company?”

Stephen slid her a sideways glance, those eyes of his so hard to read. Sometimes Mary thought that alone was reason enough to find him attractive. “I serve at the pleasure of my queen.”

There was an undertone to his voice, a hint of ambiguity in those last two words. Mary had always been a gambler. Now she threw the dice as though she could see which way they would fall. “I hope your queen appreciates your service.”

“How is one to recognize a queen’s appreciation?” Now, that was more like it—subtle, but undeniable. He was letting her know she need only sanction it.

She paused, instinctively choosing the best position for the weak light to gleam on her hair and skin. She might not be the sylph she was as a newlywed in France, or even when she’d married Darnley, but Mary knew how to highlight her beauty and shadow her flaws.

With a smile that just hinted at seduction, Mary said, “Stephen, Stephen…” She rested one of her lovely hands on his sleeve. “The chance that has so cruelly kept me locked away might just as easily swing to my side and restore my fortunes. I shall be most generous with those who have been my friends.”

Rumour was that Dominic Courtenay was a silent, disapproving sort of man who disliked games of sex or politics. It seemed that his eldest son was more pliable. With admiration and familiarity playing across his handsome face, Stephen made his own gamble. “Lady, what are you up to?”

“Perhaps,” she whispered, “we shall talk about nightingales.”

Without another word, he bent his dark head to her—not in acknowledgment, but to brush his lips across her knuckles. Mary caught her breath. Straightening, he looked at her, as though waiting an unspoken permission. He must have seen it in her eyes, for his next kiss was pressed gently to her lips.

He tasted young…like new grass and spring rain. He knew how to judge his moments; the kiss was not too bold or too long and he did not touch her other than where he still held her hand in his.

A pity, Mary thought, that I cannot take him with me. But she rather doubted she could have both husband and lover. Ah well, she knew how to take the sweet while she could. Another week or two, then she would lay Stephen aside and embrace her future.