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FRANCIS LEANED HALFWAY out the window at the top of the Canted Tower, waving at the small procession far below surrounding a litter carried by two liveried servants. In vain; no one could see him up here. He recognized Trumpet and assumed the man on the litter was Tom. The tall man must be Sir Walter. She’d found a way to persuade him to assist her. Wise choice.
He climbed down the hundred and twenty-two steps as quickly as he dared. No purpose could be served by slipping and cracking his own head. He hoped Tom wasn’t seriously injured, but he had every faith in the man’s powers of recuperation. He knew he was alive because he smelled no smoke and had spotted no flames.
Francis had questioned a few men in the Great Hall about Tom’s whereabouts, made one circuit of the orchard and gardens, and then abandoned that futile exercise. Tom would never come back and go on about his day after Trumpet missed their tryst. He would go search for her, thereby separating himself from the group and exposing himself to the ruthless and opportunistic killer.
He deduced that they would take him to the best bedchamber Trumpet had in her command: her own. She’d convince Stephen it was his idea. It was as good a choice as any, on the ground floor with adequate windows to keep the room from getting too hot in the afternoon should Tom develop a fever . . .
He caught up with them at the door and waited outside while Tom was transferred to the bed and someone was sent to fetch the palace surgeon. He stood beside Mrs. Throckmorton, who told him how they’d found Tom trapped under a huge log on a steep slope. She didn’t say how he had fallen, and Francis didn’t ask.
The litter-bearers left, along with two other men. Stephen’s voice sounded through the open windows. “What’s going on here? Is that Tom? What’s happened to him?”
Francis could hear Trumpet’s voice, but not her words. He decided to go inside and take a quick look at Tom himself. It wasn’t that he was particularly concerned; he just wanted to verify the severity of the man’s condition with his own eyes before the surgeon arrived.
He wove through the people crowding the anteroom and sidled into the larger chamber. Tom lay in state on a wide bed, propped up on pillows with his legs extended. His shoes and stockings had been removed, revealing a big lump on one shin surrounded by angry red skin. He was awake, chatting with Sir Walter, and seemed well enough, if a shade pale, with tension around the eyes betraying his pain.
“How are you?” Francis asked.
“Could be worse.” Tom mustered a grin. “I seem to have broken my leg. Shouldn’t affect my handwriting though.”
“Well, that’s the important thing.” Francis appreciated the lack of drama. “We can arrange some sort of bed desk for you. I’ve taken several dozen pages of notes on King Henry the Seventh’s statutes that ought to be fair-copied.”
Sir Walter chuckled and patted Tom on the shoulder. “Anytime you’d like a change of scenery, you know where to find me.” He nodded at Francis and left.
“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I’m not leaving Gray’s. But I’m not copying those cursed notes of yours either.”
“I made them up.” Francis moved to the head of the bed. “Were you pushed?”
“Lady Mary. Go arrest her for me, will you?”
“I will. Her accomplice in the French embassy is Pierre Rondeau. He wrote the letter you found in the wall.”
“That bastard! I knew those hounds had his measure.”
The surgeon and his bone-setter appeared in the doorway. “Everyone out now, please. Allow us to do our work.” They began clearing a table to set up their tools.
Francis started to pat Tom’s shoulder, then thought it might seem odd since he’d never done such a thing before. But Tom caught his sleeve to pull him back, speaking in a low voice. “That witch hurt Trumpet. Put a burr under her saddle, something like that. Got her thrown from her horse. Make sure she’s seen to properly, won’t you?”
“If she’ll let me.” Francis managed a stiff smile, but his heart clenched. He might have lost both of these dear friends today.
He shook his head as he walked away. Lady Mary appeared to be the usual sort of empty-headed flibbertigibbet so often found among the upper ranks. Well-born young ladies weren’t expected to do much more than dress themselves and gossip. And yet she had gotten away with two murders and nearly accomplished two more, all within the span of a fortnight. She had to be stopped.
Francis went out into the anteroom and joined Trumpet on a bench. Stephen leaned in the outer doorway, talking to someone. “Oh yes, he’s one of my oldest friends, not to mention a useful connection. Soon to be a barrister, you know. Gray’s Inn. He was injured in the course of executing a confidential matter on my behalf, so it’s only right that my lady and I should look after him here.”
“That’s not even a falsehood,” Francis said.
Trumpet smiled. “Truth is the easiest lie to maintain.”
Tom screamed in pain and Trumpet clutched Francis’s hand. He froze, not sure what to do, but she released him after only a moment.
“Sorry,” she said.
He shook his head to dismiss the apology. “They must have set the bone. He’ll feel much better now, once the shock subsides.”
“Good.” She glanced around to be sure no one was listening. “It was Mary.”
“Tom told me. He said you were thrown from your horse. Are you all right?”
She clucked her tongue at the irrelevant digression. “A bump on my head, a bruise on my elbow. It’s nothing. But shouldn’t we ask Sir Walter to arrest her?”
“Not yet. Monsieur Joubert and I have come up with a rather clever ploy.”
Trumpet rolled her eyes with a groan. “Why must we always have a clever ploy? Why can’t I just go drag the lying whore out of her room by her ruff and kick her to death in the Great Court?”
Francis laughed before the full horror of that image developed in his mind. He willed it away. “We have Tom’s testimony about her pushing him off that ledge, but it wouldn’t be hard to dispute. He is larger and stronger than that slight lady. Besides, I prefer the clarity of inducing the villain to convict herself.”
“You like devising clever tricks.”
Francis gave her a remonstrative glare, though he couldn’t quite suppress the twitch of a smile. “We take our diversions where we find them, my lady.”
* * *
THE NEXT EVENING, A few minutes before six o’clock, Francis crossed the garden to the short tower where the orchard wall met the outer wall. The French ambassador and his staff had taken up residence here. Michel met him at the foot of the stairs. Francis asked, “Is everyone in place?”
“They are. Your wounded clerk has the best view.”
They climbed to the top of the tower, which overlooked the stretch of wall where Pierre Rondeau and Mary Buckleigh exchanged their letters. Tom sat ensconced in a cushioned armchair with his leg supported in a fracture box. The chair was raised up and angled so he could see better. Trumpet and Stephen stood on either side of him. They’d chosen the best spot between the gaps in the crenellated battlement.
Sir Walter and Sir Charles stood at another gap while Mrs. Throckmorton and Lady Rich shared a farther one. All the suspects had come to witness their vindication. As Captain of the Guard, Sir Walter would have a further role.
“She just left her house,” Trumpet said. Tom raised his right thumb at Francis. His color had improved, though a gauziness in his eyes suggested he’d been given a goodly dose of laudanum to dull his pain.
Michel and Francis squeezed in with the ladies and peered down into the orchard. They had devised this ploy yesterday in the alehouse after Trumpet left. Rondeau’s handwriting had been enough to convince the ambassador to keep his employee under guard. But Francis believed they needed something more concrete to arrest Lady Mary for treason. Francis knew he didn’t have sufficient grounds to accuse her of murder.
He had invited Sir Walter to a meeting with the ambassador this morning, where he laid out the whole story of the two murders and the two attempts. Sir Walter knew most of it, but the ambassador had been thunderstruck. “He will receive no mercy,” he’d said through Michel. “We will send him back to France to face the wrath of his king.”
Francis had explained to him that Rondeau would certainly be tried and executed in England since his crime had been committed here against their queen.
“Eh, bien,” the ambassador had said with a shrug. He’d expressed his satisfaction with any procedure that resulted in the varlet’s death.
Rondeau told them everything, in a vain bid for clemency. Lady Mary had been recommended to him by a gentleman who had known her family at the English embassy in Paris. He said the lady liked to discover other people’s secrets and would welcome the supplement to her allowance. She both spoke and wrote fluent French.
Her task had been to keep a diary of everything she could learn about the people around the queen and leave it behind the loose brick every few days for Rondeau to collect. Her allowance, along with instructions to seek more information in certain directions, were delivered in the same way.
Rondeau had devised a method for signaling the presence of a new diary or purse. Walking through the gallery between the Chapel Royal and the gatehouse, one could easily spot a spray of red carnations placed on top of the wall. That was the main reason for the ladder. The items would always be collected at six o’clock, when most of the palace gathered for supper in the hall.
Francis and Michel then wrote their own letter, simulating Rondeau’s hand. It didn’t much matter what it said. The purpose was for Sir Walter and the other witnesses to watch while Mary found a ladder, climbed up to remove the loose brick, took out the letter with a purse full of pennies, replaced the brick, and climbed down.
This she did, oblivious to the watchers on the battlement. Mary weighed the purse in one hand, then tucked it in her pocket. She barely glanced at the seal on the letter — imprinted with Rondeau’s own ring — before slitting it with her thumbnail.
“That skit-brained ninny!” Trumpet scoffed. “Why doesn’t she just read it out loud while she’s standing there waiting to be caught?”
“I can tell you what it says.” Francis turned toward his assistants. “It says, ‘Abandon hope. Your deeds are discovered. Expect immediate reprisal.’”
Sir Walter grinned and made a circular motion with one uplifted arm. Three members of the queen’s guard burst through the garden gate and took Mary Buckleigh into custody. She squealed and yammered excuses, then turned her scowling face up to the tower as her accusers cheered and applauded. She’d been caught in the act, one last time.
Trumpet sighed. “That was almost enough to repay my hours of fear. Almost, but not quite.”
Stephen summoned two of his men to take charge of Tom in his chair and carry him back to bed. “My testimony will be vital to her conviction, don’t you think?”
Tom grinned. “We could not have reached this successful conclusion without your help, my lord. You did well.”
Most of the party moved toward the stairs, waiting for Tom to be carried down first. Francis and Michel lingered, leaning with their elbows on the smooth stones of the battlement. The breeze up here was most agreeable. They watched the guards march Lady Mary out of the orchard and into the Privy Lodgings. She’d be held under lock and key until they could arrange a boat to transfer her and her co-conspirator to the Tower. And there she would live for the short remainder of her life.
“If it were not for the tragic loss of those bright young persons,” Michel said, “I would find this game of yours most entertaining.”
Francis shot him a wry smile. “I’ll admit I enjoy the intellectual challenge these cases present. But that isn’t why I do it. The crime of murder is atrocious; an affront to God, the queen, and all humanity. I have a moral duty to pursue justice.” He shrugged, hearing some arrogance in those words.
“You can, therefore you must,” Michel interpreted. “I agree.”
“But if I’m honest, I must confess that I’m a bit disgusted with myself to have been outwitted for so long by that girl.”
“She has the cunning and ruthlessness of a person lacking any moral foundation. What she wants is all that matters. That is hard to anticipate, especially when you are trained to seek more complex motives.”
“I suppose that’s true. I must learn from this lesson, then, not to overestimate my opponents in the future.” They traded knowing looks, intellectually so much in accord.
They enjoyed the breeze and each other’s nearness for a while in silence. Then Michel asked, “What will you do now, mon ami? Will you continue to write advice letters for the ungrateful Cecils?”
“One or two, here and there, perhaps. They’re read to the queen sometimes.” Francis stared across the orchard, where glossy leaves danced in the evening sun. Then he turned around to lean his back against the warm battlement. “But only one or two, if the subject interests me. When my brother comes home, I am sure he will be pleased to join me in fostering better understanding between England and France.”
“That would please me and my king as well.”
“You will be an essential ally in that effort.” Francis turned his head to smile at him. “We’ll exchange observations, you and I. And when you go back to France, perhaps you’ll lend a hand to Anthony’s intelligencers there from time to time.”
“I would be honored to do so. And I will return here whenever I am able. Unlike you, I like to travel.”
“I like to have guests.”
“But you will need a new patron, n’est pas? Someone to speak for you, to be your advocate with the queen? Someone who appreciates your unique abilities.”
Francis thought of the Earl of Essex and the offers of friendship conveyed through his sister. His eyes turned toward the stairs, where only Lady Rich and Sir Charles still waited to go down. She turned toward him as if sensing his gaze and smiled. She touched Charles on the arm, gesturing for him to precede her down the stairs, and stood back from the door.
Francis straightened up and dusted the front of his doublet. He laid a hand on Michel’s shoulder. “You are correct, mon ami. I do need a new patron. And I believe I’ll take the first step in that direction right now.”
