The Stolen One

by Suzanne Crowley

  Maisy lit a candle. She walked to the stairs and pointed. “Where is Ava, the kitchen girls, the grooms?” I whispered.

  “Some fled. Others downed with the sickness. It came of a sudden.” She peered up the stairs. “It’s mighty powerful, I tell you. Unstoppable.”

  “What kind of sickness?” I asked her.

  “The pox, ma’am. I’m sorry. I should have told you, but I was so afraid. So afraid you wouldn’t come. We couldn’t get anyone to help us, not even the doctor or the herb woman from Downs Street. I remembered you had a talent with potions.”

  I took the candle from her and went up the stairs, my feet heavy, so heavy as I walked down the dark hall. I pushed open Lady Ludmore’s door. The room was lit by several tapering candles, guttering away—“Prepare the winding sheets” Grace would have said. A low fire cast an amber glow around the room. There were two figures in the bed. I walked closer. It was Lady Ludmore and Bartolome, blistered and pustuled, their faces barely recognizable. Oh, God’s me! I took a deep breath.

  “Where’s Lord Ludmore?” I asked.

  “Down the hall,” Maisy answered. “When he came home from the feast, he was already in a fever. It’s those that get it last that go down the hardest, I’m afraid.”

  I listened for Lady Ludmore’s breath. It was there but faint, like small wavelets over a dry river. Bartolome’s breath was more even and full.

  “Can you help them?” asked Maisy behind me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I opened my bag and took out clary wort and galyntyne. “We can only make them comfortable. Perhaps Bartolome has a chance. Boil this with honey and goat’s milk, white pepper, and cloves. I have but a little bit. If we had time I’d get more. But pray me, there’s no time.”

  Maisy started to cry. “Oh, stop that blubbering, girl; I’m not dead yet,” Lady Ludmore suddenly said. Maisy startled, and crossed herself. She took the herbs from me and ran from the room.

  “Lady Ludmore,” I said, taking her hand.

  “So I shall die, shall I?” she asked me. “Perhaps you shouldn’t come near, child.”

  “Nothing in life is certain.” I looked away.

  “Except death. Don’t lie to me, girl.” She coughed. “Should I be praying for my soul?”

  I looked straight at her. “Yes.”

  “Thank God I won’t be joining Luddy,” she said with a laugh that quickly turned into a violent cough. “He’s down in hell for what he did to my boy.”

  I dipped a cloth in the basin near the bed and put it on her brow. “No,” she said. “Tend to Bartolome. Give him everything. All of it. You must save him at any cost.” Oh, God’s me, she didn’t know Rafael was sick, too.

  Maisy came back with my potion in a steaming pot just as I placed a cloth over Bartolome’s face. He didn’t stir. Still, though, his breathing was even, and I was glad of it. I dipped a second cloth into the pot and started to rub the mixture over his body.

  “She’s gone,” Maisy said suddenly, falling to her knees. I looked up. Lady Ludmore’s eyes, still and fixed, rested on Bartolome.

  Aye, and he did meet a ghastly end, for it took the ax man two whacks we hear, this day the 20th of March. And it be no day for celebrating, for both my babes have lost their father, and little Mary now be an orphan, and a poor one to boot for her mother rashly gave all her inheritance to him, and now that he be executed for thirty-three counts of treason the crown has seized it all. Lord Seymour the Protector is a cruel man, and his wife even more so. She has not even looked once upon the babe, not once, for she sees her as a rival in rank to her own newborn child. But God have mercy on us, for we have good tidings. We are sent to Catherine Willoughby, the Duchess of Suffolk, the good queen’s old friend. I pray she be a kind and righteous woman who will love the queen’s child as her own…as I do. The Lord Protector promises to send the child tapestries, and rich plate, and later to restore lands and jewels her mother inherited from King Henry. This is the child’s only hope. But I see the man is wicked, more so than his brother, a thousand times he is. We are sent away, a dozen of us, with barely a thing, just the linen upon our backs, the two milch cows, and a few paltry nursery items. But I have something, aye, I have, something that the queen’s child rightly is due. It will be her inheritance, her safety. Jane the fool predicts an ugly end for all of us. God’s precious soul, do not forget us….

  CHAPTER 26

  He was lying in his bed, in the dark. I walked slowly forward, a candle in hand, till I reached his bedside. His eyes were closed, his breathing labored. The pox and pustules were just beginning to form on his beautiful face. I moved the candle down to his open nightshirt, revealing rivers upon rivers of snarling pink scars. I pulled back his shirt. I held my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. Scars flamed up and down his torso.

  “So this is what it takes to get you to my bed,” he said hoarsely.

  “What madness is this?” I gasped as I held the candle above his stomach.

  “How is my mother and the boy?” he asked.

  “They are resting comfortably,” I lied.

  “Will they live?” he asked. “I’ve grown rather fond of the boy.”

  “He’s your son,” I said as I felt his forehead. A high fever that had little hope of breaking, not without a miracle, not even if I had a full basket of my herbs.

  He blinked. “Why would you say such a thing to a dying man?” he asked, but in a way that indicated he knew it was true.

  “A blue-eyed beauty in Kent, I believe was Lady Ludmore’s description of his mother.”

  I ran a cold cloth gently over him, his face and chest.

  “Your mother cared very much for you,” I said.

  “Not when I was younger,” he said, sounding like the child he had been. “She let him, she let my father hurt me. So I left determined that I would never marry, determined to let the Ludmore name die out forever. It was my revenge.”

  “Then why did you come home?”

  “I spotted a beautiful lass I couldn’t forget.” He smiled. “And I found out she was headed for London.”

  I smiled, too. “And saw many more beautiful women in London.”

  “No. Just one,” he said.

  “Stop teasing. You didn’t care to see your mother again?” I asked.

  “I cared.” He sighed. “I cared too much.”

  “Rafael,” I said. “What is all this?” I asked as I ran a finger up his chest. He winced.

  “Many years ago, after I left. A small town in Yorkshire. I happened upon it,” he closed his eyes a moment before speaking again. “Someone was being burned at the stake and I tried to save her.” He smiled slightly, looking up at me. “Perhaps I do have a heart, Heartbreaker.” He closed his eyes again, trying to gather a breath. Then he continued, “It was a young girl, so very young. I couldn’t save her, and in turn was burned myself. I can still feel the flames.”

  “You said your scars were a gift from the queen,” I whispered, a feeling of horror rising in my throat.

  “It was by order of your queen that this girl was being burned to death, for little more than her words,” he spat out.

  I could not believe it. “No,” I said. “She’s kind. She would not do such a thing.”

  He laughed bitterly. “You are naïve, little one,” he said.

  With shaking hands, I dipped a clean cloth into the bowl of water near the bed and wrung it out. He caught my arm. “If I live, I will kill her.”

  “Is that the true reason you came home, to do her harm?” I asked, tears filling my eyes.

  “I thought perhaps there was hope for me. But it was too late. I died a long time ago. Let me go, Katherine; it will be a mercy,” he said.

  “Live,” I told him. “Live for your son.”

  “My son,” he smiled, faintly.

  I managed a smile just as Maisy brought in the pot of herbs. Her eyes grew big when she saw Rafael. “There’s just a bit left; perhaps it could help him.” She backed out of the room.
>
  “What is that, a potion to save me?”

  “It might, if there is a will to live,” I said.

  “Save it,” he said. “Use it on Bartolome.”

  Later, after I’d closed his eyes and turned the sheets over him, I went and peered out the window. The sun was rising, and just beyond the rooftops, a line of trees glimmered like emeralds.

  I had long judged Grace, indeed I had, for letting Jane the fool die. But was I any better? Would I rot in hell someday like her? I did not know nor care. Maisy met me at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Ava has passed away also, but Bartolome, his fever broke,” she said woodenly.

  “Is there any money in the house?” I asked, breathing deeply. Hot, I felt so hot.

  “A coin or two perhaps, hidden in the larder,” she said. “How is the master? Will he live?”

  “He’s gone too,” I said my voice cracking, and she fell to her knees. “We need money to pay the gravedigger.” I walked to a chair at the table, hoping the movement might bring me relief, but if anything, I felt hotter, like I was burning alive.

  “Lord Ludmore, poor soul, he never did anything right in his life,” Maisy said. “Lady Ludmore forever worried about it. The crown will seize everything. There is no true heir. What will we do? I have no family, no one.”

  I rose, gripping the back of the chair. “Listen to me very carefully. You are to stay here until Bartolome is better. I will send you more coins, enough to bury everyone. Once that is done, you must send Bartolome to Blackchurch Cottage in Gloucestershire. Anna…” I choked out. “Anna will want him. Then you are to come to me as my maid, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, yes, I will,” she sat down on the stairs and sobbed. “You will not forsake us, will you?”

  “No,” I told her. “Now take your dress off and give it me. I’ll sell the one I wear. And I’ll come right back.”

  God’s death, but how can it get worse? The duchess hates the queen’s child too and spends, it seems, every minute of the day scheming of how she may be rid of all of us. She wrote many a letter, I hear, to a lord of the Parliament, asking that the child’s inheritance be restored to her, but to no avail. Even the child’s living relatives cry poor mouth and turn their backs. And the Lord Protector has yet to send the things he promised, and I know we’d sooner get blood from a turnip than any kindness from him. I’ve had to hide my poor Anna—the duchess can’t abide any of us, let alone a bastard—and the other servants cover for me, for they have grown to love her. She is a scrawny, ugly little thing. But thank God above for her malformed ears, for she seems to be deaf as a doornail and never much makes a sound. We all pray that someone, anyone, will come for the child and relieve us of this woman. I hatched a plan to save us, sending Agnes back to my home with her cow and a gaggle of ducks I bought with a coin to ready a place for us. But the nitwit married me own brother Godfrey, she did. And now I am left to bide my time and seize the right moment, and it is tonight, for Mary is very sick, and I know in my heart that something is amiss. I start to pack right here and now. This is the moment, I know, but Jane the fool catches me carefully packing the babe’s nursery things and I bravely tell her, “Aye, and I shall leave in the night with my two babes.” And she begs me to never do such a thing for fear of the reprisal for the rest of them, and I tell her, “Who shall look for this queen’s child? No one, not one gentle soul has come for her, nor will. They’ve all forsaken her.” “Well then, leave, and I shall come for it someday, in payment for my silence,” Jane the fool says to me, and I knew not how she guessed of the queen’s necklace I took the night the queen died.

  Later, much later, I heard it told that the duchess let it be known that the queen’s child died in the night and was buried in the churchyard, and in a sense she was, for from then on she was Katherine, named for her mother. But no one here shall ever guess, for I keep her close to the cottage and her hair bundled. No one will ever wrench her from me.

  CHAPTER 27

  I floated in a dark world of ghosts. Rafael was there, smiling at me. He told me I had put him out of his misery and then he slowly drifted away. And Grace was there too, laughing and beckoning me to come to her, but when I tried to flee I found I had no legs. And then Jane the fool offered a golden goblet of wine. I sipped it while mystical beasts, grotesque and fanciful, roared around me, baring their sharp teeth. And a dark-hooded figure sang to me like an angel, but when I tried to lift her hood she backed away, pulling my hand, and the world became bright, so bright I had to close my eyes again and I cried and cried. And it seemed I had been here in this dark world forever.

  “Hush, hush,” came a calm, sweet voice. “There, there now. It’s time to come back to us.”

  My eyes fluttered open and there before me was the ghost, the ghost of my dreams. Only her hood was pulled back, her face scarred, deformed, like the ugly beasts of the world below that I’d seen in Cosmographia. But her eyes, blue like a clear winter sky, were kind and glistening. I had seen her before, aye, I had. She was Lady Mary Sidney.

  “You took care of me, didn’t you?” I asked a few minutes later when the world was more clear. My throat was parched. I looked about and saw I was in a sumptuous bed with embroidered counterpanes. Along the borders, cast in black and gold, were the beasts I’d seen in my dreams. A low fire roared in a nearby fireplace, and above it hung a portrait of a handsome gentleman. And by a far door, a maid sat. I blinked a couple of times before realizing who it was. Iris.

  “No one else could,” Lady Sidney answered, bringing a golden goblet to my lips.

  “How did I get here?” I asked, falling back on my pillow.

  “You were brought to the palace,” she answered. “By a man who said he found you lying in the street near a millinery shop. He disappeared before anyone could inquire of him further. The queen had you discreetly brought to me.”

  “Where are we?” I asked wearily.

  “In the palace. I have hidden rooms as I do not mix with society anymore. Beyond that door there is a secret hall that leads to the store.”

  “And Iris, she’s your maid?” I asked.

  “Yes. She’s my family here—here in the dark. My children are mostly kept from me, but I am glad of it. I want them to live, to enjoy the outside world.”

  “And the handsome man in the painting, who is he?” I asked, my eyes glancing again above the fireplace.

  Lady Sidney sat back in her chair and took up her stitching. She sighed deeply before answering, “My beloved husband. I was the fairest in his eyes one day and the foulest the next. He now seeks the arms of a younger woman. This the man who said he’d love me till death parted us. And I believed him. Women, we are always the fools.”

  I tried to lift my arm but it fell limp and heavy like a fallen branch. “How long have I been like this?”

  She looked down to her stitching, a small panel of delicately worked rainbows and raindrops. The work was beautifully done. “Over a fortnight. You barely survived, my dear. The court moved to Richmond upon news of the pox in London. They returned yesterday. Everyone was told you are recovering at the Ludmores. Dorothy has been beside herself with worry, I hear, but of course hasn’t ventured a visit. She has her complexion to worry of. And Ipollyta brought you a drink, just last night. She somehow knew you were here.”

  “And I drank it?” I asked, coughing. “She’s poisoned me before. Oh God, I shall die.”

  Lady Sidney laughed as she pulled up a stitch. “You shall not die. In fact, I think it was Ipollyta’s drink that saved you. It’s everyone else who wishes your death.”

  “Who? Who wishes my death?”

  “Practically half of the court, my dear. Everyone is very jealous of your closeness with the queen. Even my brother Robert Dudley is wary of you and not pleased I have nursed you.”

  “Does the queen know you are here?”

  “Of course. She had the rooms built for me and visits me often.”

  “Has anyone else visited?” I asked, wonder
ing if the queen had come for me.

  “No, I’m sorry, the poxed are short of visitors,” she said. “I should know.” A feeling of terror coursed through me, hot down to my toes. I tried to sit up.

  “God’s me,” I cried. “Where’s a mirror?” I stared at her crippled face and a strangled cry came out. Then I slowly raised my hand up to my own cheek. Poxed, I was poxed; I could feel several on my cheek.

  Lady Sidney did not look up from her stitching. “They will fade with time,” she said quietly. “As all things do—love, loyalty, hate. You are lucky to be alive, my child. Very lucky. And it’s not nearly as bad as mine. You are still beautiful. You will marry, live well. Although its unlikely you’ll have children. I’m sorry.”

  I held my hands over my ears. “God has forsaken me for I have sinned.”

  “No, my child, God has given you a gift, a gift. You live.”

  I rolled over to my side, as tears ran down my face. “Has the queen come to see me?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Not at all?” I asked.

  “She’s a queen. A queen cannot risk getting sick. That’s why the court moved to Richmond.”

  “She left me?”

  “You couldn’t be moved, my dear. And she could not stay. It’s as simple as that for a queen.”

  “But she had the pox before, did she not?” I asked, then realized my error. Lady Sidney had gotten the pox while nursing the queen.

  She continued stitching. “Hers was a mild case. It’s conceivable she could take sick again. She inquired of you, of course, but she couldn’t come.” I’d do anything for you, I’d die for you, Grace had said long ago. But the queen would not. I reached down and felt the ring upon my finger. I hold what I have. Except for me.

  “Rest, my dear. Rest.”