The Betrayal (18 page)

Of course, Tomas knew it was me straight away, for I was a female disguised as a male disguised as a female and in all truth I was not very different from the way I usually looked, although I was made up to look older and had been padded around the behind to appear fatter.

‘I see you are playing the part of Mistress Midge!’ Tomas said.

I laughed. ‘I am certainly larger of beam than normal.’ I curtseyed to him and then to Juliette, who nodded at me briefly.

‘Here again, are you?’ She looked around the tent. ‘Is Mr Shakespeare here?’ she asked. ‘I have heard that this play is by him.’

I shook my head as I rose from my curtsey. ‘I haven’t heard that he’s here today. I believe he resides in Warwickshire.’

Clearly disappointed, she began scanning the crowd for someone more illustrious to speak to. Her hair was braided very prettily, I noticed, and studded here and there with pearls.

‘Are you well?’ Tomas asked me.

‘I am, I thank you.’ I cleared my throat, wondering how to say what I had to. ‘And are you and your family well, Madam?’ I asked somewhat nervously, for of course it was not seemly for someone like me to ask a member of the nobility such a thing.

She gave me a sharp look. ‘What an extraordinary question.’

I hesitated and blurted out, ‘’Tis only that … that I think Lady Ashe a noble lady and hoped that all was well with her family. It
is
Lady Margaret Ashe who is your aunt, is it not?’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘It is, and I’m sure she will be most grateful for your solicitous thoughts.’

I felt myself blush, partly because of the sarcasm in her voice – but mostly with shock. I had surely caught her out! She’d told me once again she was Lady Ashe’s niece, but this was not possible.

Tomas looked at me curiously. ‘Is something wrong,
Lucy? Are you nervous about the part you must play?’

I shook my head as one of the actors – a grand, overbearing type – began speaking to Juliette of the great love he bore the queen.

I found my voice. ‘Will you come to the table and take a glass of ale, Sir?’ I asked Tomas.

He nodded and we walked the few steps out of her hearing. ‘What is it? Why did you speak to Mistress Juliette so? Do you know her family?’

I nodded. ‘Do you remember I told you that Lord and Lady Ashe own all the land in Hazelgrove?’ I said. ‘He is the lord of our manor; they are both very well loved.’

‘I do remember it, now that you’ve reminded me,’ Tomas said. ‘And Mistress Juliette is their niece.’

‘But that’s just it – she isn’t!’ I said, speaking in a fierce whisper.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I had to go back to Mortlake last week and my mother was there, and she told me that Lady Ashe’s niece had recently died abroad.’

Tomas was shaking his head before I’d even finished. ‘Then the girl living abroad must have been another, different niece.’

‘There is only one!’

‘Then perhaps Mistress Juliette here is a young cousin or some other relation to the lady.’

I shook my head vehemently. ‘No. Tomas, I’ve got a feeling about her. I think she’s a counterfeit. She is no
more Lady Ashe’s niece than I am. She is merely playing a part. I am anxious –’ and as the thought sprang to my mind, I spoke the words ‘– anxious for the safety of the queen!’

He burst out laughing. ‘There are many who plot to harm Her Grace, but I don’t think Mistress Juliette is one.’ He picked up my hand and kissed it, looking at me playfully. ‘Lucy – dear Mistress Lucy – can it be that you are as green as the clothing I wear today?’

I snatched my hand back. ‘No, Sir! It’s not jealousy that afflicts me.’

‘Then I think some springtime sickness is upon you.’

‘The only springtime sickness is on your part! The lady is false –’ the feeling was strengthening as I spoke ‘– and the fact that you can’t see this was probably caused by an over-indulgence in hearts, sonnets and flowers on St Valentine’s Day!’

‘But I was not at the palace that day.’

I found pleasure in this news, but did not wish to show it. ‘’Tis nothing to me, Sir, whether you were or no.’

‘I had to go away unexpectedly for Her Grace.’

‘Nevertheless, it appears to me that you are allowing your feelings for Mistress Juliette to get in the way of the truth.’

He shook his head. ‘I merely think there must be another explanation.’

‘Then for a while, we must agree to differ,’ I said stiffly.

He touched my arm. ‘I refuse to quarrel with you, Lucy. I’m the queen’s fool, here to make people laugh. And today is the first day of spring and a cause for celebration.’

‘In truth it is,’ I agreed. I swallowed hard and managed to smile, for I didn’t want him to see how hurt I was. ‘But before you recommence your duties, Tomas, speak to me of the queen and how she fares. Someone told me that she has signed a certain death warrant …’

He nodded. ‘She has been persuaded to do so, for ’tis certain that Mary of Scotland desires the English throne and will not rest until she gets it. She sealed her fate when she put her signature to a paper which called for Her Grace’s death.’

‘Truly?’ I asked. ‘It seems foolish to put such a thing in writing.’

‘Indeed. Although Mary’s supporters say that the words were added to an innocent letter
after
she’d signed it.’

‘Then how does one know who to believe?’ I asked.

‘Exactly,’ he said, raising an eyebrow, and I knew he was referring to the question I’d posed over Juliette, as well as that concerning the queen’s cousin.

As far as I was concerned, however, there was no dilemma. My ma might be poor and old, but she could be trusted in what she said, and if she told me that
Lady Ashe’s niece was dead, then dead she was, and this girl was an imposter.

Now I had merely to prove it.

‘Was the queen looking well, and was she in good heart?’ Mistress Midge asked the following day.

‘She was. And she laughed very much at the play, even though I didn’t think its intention was to be funny.’

‘Who are we to judge what is funny and what is not when a
queen
is present?’ said Mistress Midge. ‘If she laughed, then the play was a merry one.’

I nodded and smiled, though my heart felt heavy. Tomas hadn’t believed me! Tomas would rather believe a lady-in-waiting with long brown hair the colour of newly opened chestnuts.

‘Did the queen have a suitor with her?’ Mistress Midge wanted to know.

‘She had several,’ I said. I ticked off on my fingers, ‘Sir Francis Drake, Sir Christopher Hatton and a
Spanish prince all wanted to sit beside her during the play, but they say she is not enamoured of any of them.’

‘There!’ Mistress Midge said with satisfaction. ‘She’s her own woman, that one.
She’ll
never dance to a man’s tune!’

‘But the word is that she’s accepted Drake’s Diamond as a gift from Sir Francis,’ I said, ‘and all are talking of his generosity, for the stone is extremely rare – and worth a king’s ransom!’

‘Taking precious jewels is one thing,’ said Mistress Midge, ‘taking a man’s hand in marriage quite another.’

‘Was Mr James there?’ Sonny wanted to know. ‘He’s a funny cove, he is. You could hide a badger in his beard.’

I laughed. ‘Yes, he was there.’

‘Well! Acting in plays! Whatever will you do next, Miss?’ Mistress Midge asked. And on my shrugging my shoulders, added, ‘Still, you may as well go off while you can, because when the master and mistress arrive, that’ll be an end to all your jaunting.’

I sighed. ‘I won’t be acting with the Queen’s Players for a good few days, because the whole company are removing to a house in Oxford to give some private performances.’

‘Ah! Then you’ll be able to help me sell sugar mice,’ said Mistress Midge.

‘I will, and gladly.’ I nodded. Selling sugar mice would provide me with just the excuse I needed to go to Whitehall – and once there, I was going to brave all
to try and discover the truth about Juliette.

The previous day the painters had finished in the room that would be Dr Dee’s study (it was a tenth the size of his room in Mortlake, so couldn’t really be called a library), and I spent the rest of that morning taking in his precious books and stacking them around the room as neatly as I could, ready for him to put on the new shelves as he pleased. The kitchen had already been cleared, scrubbed and had had shelves erected, and Mistress Midge was concentrating on putting this room to rights so that when the Dee family arrived the household would carry on as before: Mistress Midge would run the house and do the cooking, I would care for the children, and Mistresses Dee and Allen would shuffle about doing whatever it was they usually did to pass their days. As for Dr Dee and Mr Kelly, I presumed that as well as continuing their never-ending search for the philosopher’s stone, they would offer a service for those London folk who wanted to have their dreams analysed, their horoscopes cast or their lost treasures hunted for, and perhaps there would be more customers than there had been at Mortlake.

After dinner Mistress Midge baked and sugared a deal of mice and, after helping her with the whiskers and noses, Sonny and I set off to Whitehall Palace with a batch of them on a tray. The open square was busy with people milling about in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the queen, and we marvelled greatly as a grandly dressed lady went past us borne on a litter, her
bearers running at full tilt through the crowd, waving handbells. There were also many novelties to be seen that day: a dancing dog, a man eating fire and another carving a statue from a block of ice as well as the many ordinary street-sellers crying oysters, garlic, mousetraps or sugared rose petals.

‘There seems to be almost as many sideshows here as at Bartholomew Fair,’ I said to Sonny.

‘Aye, there are, Missus,’ he said. He was intent on what he called ‘tidying’ the tray of mice, which meant he would eat any mice which looked lopsided or uneven (and if there weren’t any, would nibble one or two until they were).

‘Sonny, I have a mind to get right inside the palace and see what I can see,’ I said, drawing a gasp from him. If, I thought, I could discover where the ladies-in-waiting lodged, then it might be possible to get into Juliette’s chamber and garner some evidence against her; some proof that she wasn’t who she said she was.

‘Go inside the palace!’ Sonny looked at me, aghast. ‘’Tis said that curiosity killed the cat, Missus! By your leave, I’ll not go with you.’

‘No, you stay here,’ I said, for I had no intention of getting him into danger and possibly taken back to Christ’s Hospital. ‘I’ll leave you in the square to sell the rest of the mice. Can I trust you not to eat too many more?’

‘No, you cannot,’ he said stoutly. ‘’Tis too much temptation to put in the way of a growing lad.’

‘Then I trust you not to eat more than six!’ I gave him the tray – but took off two, which I wrapped in a fold of paper I had brought for just this purpose. ‘Wait for me here in the square,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be back before an hour is gone.’

‘Suppose you don’t ever come back?’

I assured him that I would, went across the square and through part of the coaching yard. I then did a very dainty curtsey to one of the guards standing in a doorway, held up my little package and said I was sister of one of the laundresses, named Barbara, and I’d brought her two gingerbread mice from home.

Yawning, he pointed me along a stone passageway and I went down this, passing through some open spaces, along narrow corridors and up and down steps. He didn’t accompany me, so I was able to stop every so often to ask directions, and I also fixed some of the things I passed in my mind so that, if I had to, I’d be able to get out in a hurry. As I went along I observed a great number of people of all ages, shapes, sizes and professions, every one of them going about their duties and none paying the slightest attention to me.

After getting lost several times I found myself in the royal laundries, and arrived at a light and spacious pressing room, with piles of freshly ironed sheets and towels upon wooden pallets. These had sprigs of lavender scattered between the layers, imparting a sweet and delicate aroma to the air. There were several girls here either pressing garments or heating up irons on a range,
also a most ingenious machine in which I observed bed and table linens being folded and pressed flat. Here I found Barbara in front of a window, examining some lace with a younger girl.