The Tudor Vendetta

by C. W. Gortner

  “Strange.” I went into Cinnabar’s stall to give him some attention. He had been brushed down, his russet-colored coat gleaming as he munched on oats. I told Shelton what had happened, and that Lady Vaughan had yet to make an appearance.

  “Well, she’s lost her son,” he said. “She must be distraught. The steward told you she was abed. It is what women do when they grieve. I see no reason for suspicion.”

  “No,” I agreed, “neither do I. But I still have this feeling something is not right.” I crouched down to inspect Cinnabar’s hooves, even as Shelton said, “No need for that. Raff already checked and removed two pebbles lodged in the back shoe. I tell you, that dimwit’s got a knack for horses I haven’t seen since you were a boy.” He paused, grimacing again as I turned to him. “Sorry. I know I need to be more circumspect.”

  “You do. We both do. It’s imperative we appear to be only master and servant.”

  “How Fortune likes a joke, eh?” He guffawed. “Once you quaked at the sight of me and now look at us: I am answering to you.” He paused in his steady stroking of his brush over Cerberus. “You were saying you had a feeling something isn’t right?”

  “Yes, but I can’t explain it.” I rose to my feet, caressing my horse. “Though Lord Vaughan went to pains to explain he will be as cooperative as I can expect, I feel as though more than a child’s death and Lady Parry’s disappearance affect this house.” I went quiet, trying to unravel the vague unease I harbored. “I found a chapel,” I added. “They revere the old faith.”

  Shelton grunted. “Perhaps that can explain your unease. They must be worried. No papist will be sleeping well, now that Anne Boleyn’s daughter is on the throne.”

  “Yes, perhaps that’s it.” Now that we had broached the subject, I wondered how he stood on this perilous matter. “Are you still…?”

  He resumed his brushing of his horse. “Venerating saints and creeping to the cross? Nay, I was never one for priests either way. Nan would have my hide to hear me say it, but to me one religion is much like the other. Take away the gewgaws and Bibles, and both preach the same dire end to anyone who does not live by their rules.”

  My surprise must have shown, for he went on. “Don’t go thinking I am a heretic. I believe in Christ. I just don’t have use for those who tell me how I should go about it.”

  “I think that makes you a Protestant,” I said.

  He grinned. “Well, if it does, you must keep it between us. Nan is still papist to her marrow, no matter that she abides by whatever order happens to be the rule of the day.” He went quiet for a moment before he said, “And you? I know Alice raised you in the old ways. She hid it well enough from the rest of us, but I know she kept a rosary in her box of herbs. It is nothing to be ashamed of; we were all papist once. Even old Henry, for all his bellyaching that no pope should tell him how to conduct his affairs, kept to the old ways to his end, despite making himself Head of the Church and making us the foe of every Catholic in Europe.”

  “Honestly?” I said. “I cannot say. Alice did raise me in the old way, but she also made sure I learned the reformed one, as well. There was a time after Peregrine … I attended a requiem mass in his honor. I remember thinking how beautiful it was, how worthy of grief. But Protestants also hold services for the dead.”

  “Aye. Death is death, while the living are left behind. Still, you’ll want to reassure them you’re not here to inform against their faith,” he suggested.

  I nodded. “I will, if need be. They are not trying to hide it, at least not in their chapel. And if they intended to, their daughter Abigail disproved it in front of me.” I turned back to Cinnabar, busying myself with running my hands over his legs, dispelling the awkwardness that had fallen in the wake of our conversation.

  At length, I said, “You might ask Raff if he can tell you anything.”

  “Such as what? No, he never gets sick? No, no one can help him with his chores? No friends for Raff now that poor Masters Henry and Hugh are gone? The lad is mad as a hare. He’s no use to anyone save to open and close those gates and feed the beasts.”

  “Shelton.”

  He frowned. “Oh, fine. I’ll entertain myself tonight by asking the idiot if he knows any secrets about the family who feeds him and—”

  “No. You just said, Masters Henry and Hugh.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did.” I leaned over the short divide between the stalls. “Did Raff actually mention both those names to you?”

  He considered, raising a hand to scratch at his beard. Suddenly, he growled, catching a stray louse and squeezing it between his fingers. “Bloody hell. Forget my lack of faith; Nan will have my hide anyway, and in boiling water, too, for bringing such filth into our bed.”

  “Shelton, can you please answer me?”

  “Yes, yes. Wait a moment. I am thinking.” He gingerly searched through the gray grizzle on his chin. “Yes,” he said at length. “He said it: Henry and Hugh. I am certain of it.”

  “You did not mishear him? He said those exact names and called them ‘masters’?”

  “I am. What of it?”

  “Well, I have not heard of a Master Hugh who lives here, to start.”

  “And? The name is common enough. Half the men who toil in the London dockyards hail by it. Perhaps they have a spit boy or kitchen lad. Have you asked?”

  “Somehow, I doubt it. The household is most definitely in arrears,” I said. “The son who died was Master Henry. So, who is Master Hugh?”

  “I have no idea. If not a servant, maybe another son who died before? What about the tutor? Did not the children’s tutor accompany Lady Parry when she disappeared? They have not found him yet, either. Maybe he’s called Master Hugh and he was friendly to Raff.”

  “Maybe.” The unease I had felt earlier returned. “Whatever the case, we should find out. You can ask Raff tonight. I will have food brought to you. Fill his belly and then ask him who Hugh is.” With a pat on Cinnabar’s rump, I exited the stall and strode to the stable entrance.

  “Better send ale, too,” Shelton called after me. “And plenty of it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dusk had fallen, quenching the last of the feeble light intermingled with the fog and creating an eerie penumbra that had me staggering around like a drunkard. Finally, after stubbing my boots on various obstacles, I found my way back to the garden and door through which I had come, but when I tugged on the latch, the door held fast.

  I cursed under my breath. I was not looking forward to venturing back around the manor to the front door and contending with Master Gomfrey’s disapproving face. By now, I was in desperate need of a bath and change of clothes; my skin crawled with a perceived infestation triggered by Shelton’s discovery in his beard, and if I was to dine with Lord Vaughan in the hall, then no doubt I was already late. Not to mention, ruffians had ambushed me once already and the stranger stalking me could be hiding anywhere. This infernal soup of fog and dark would provide the perfect cover; even if he was not lurking nearby, I had no idea if that household mastiff was.

  I yanked on the latch again. Just as I was about to admit defeat and brave the blackness enveloping the garden, I heard a voice whisper, “You can come through here instead,” and I spun about, not seeing anyone. Childhood memories of ghost stories told by Alice to keep me firmly in bed made the hair on my nape to prickle. If ever there was a place for malign spirits, this was it, though I had always prided myself on being the least superstitious man I knew.

  “Here,” said the voice again, and something tapped my boot. I gasped, jumping back as a seemingly disembodied hand reached up from the fog at my very feet. Gut instinct took over; as I began to cross myself, finger to my forehead, left shoulder, then right, the hand became an arm and a pair of shoulders in a plain dress, below the pimply face of a young woman. “Here,” she said again, and I saw she stood on the worn steps of a root cellar, its trapdoor flung open. “That postern door is always locked by nightfall,” she said,
as if I were a fool not to have known it. “Come this way and I’ll take you through the kitchens to the hall.”

  I paused, looking down at her. “Who … are you?”

  She pursed her already needle-thin lips. “I am Agnes, the maidservant who made up your room. Are you coming with me or not? Hurry, before the sprites get in.” As she spoke, her watery eyes scanned our vicinity with trepidation. She, too, it seemed, had a fear of the unnatural, though in her case it was an invasion by night fairies.

  As I eased past her down the steps into a moldy space situated beneath the manor’s foundation, which piles of wicker baskets and rickety tables heaped with jars denoted as a place for storage of perishables, I heard her slam the trapdoor behind me. For an instant, I saw nothing. Then the faint glow of a handheld lantern materialized.

  “This way.” Agnes lifted the lantern higher, casting a feeble interplay of light over her uncomely features. She was like the manor itself, I thought, as fetching as stone. She moved around me; I lurched after her, practically treading on her patten-shod heels. She cast a look over her shoulder. “You might have a care, my lord. We have only just met.”

  I might have laughed at her presumption had I not been desperate to get out of that cellar. I loathed enclosed spaces almost as much as I did deep water. To me, they were one and the same: bottomless caverns waiting to swallow the hapless.

  “You’ll be late for the feast,” she said, echoing my previous thought, though the manner in which she pronounced feast held distinct sarcasm, as if plentiful food was the last thing I should expect. “You have yet to bathe and reek of horse. My lady will not be pleased; she values punctuality and cleanliness above all else.”

  Again, she spoke with marked scorn. Servants must be hard to come by here in Withernsea, I thought, for Lady Vaughan to put up with such insolence. However, having been raised myself among servants, I knew they often carried hidden resentments.

  We traversed a dank passageway and climbed another short flight of steps to a door that Agnes took her time opening, using a key she produced from her apron pocket as if it were a talisman. The lantern was guttering by now, producing more smoke than light. Between its oily stink and the darkness around us, I was starting to feel sick. When she pulled open the door to reveal the kitchen, with its fire pit and basting heat, I rushed past her as she gave a nasty giggle, such as a wicked child might emit after drowning a pet.

  A robust woman with rubicund cheeks and floppy bonnet fastened under her numerous chins barreled from behind the kitchen’s block table, which was strewn with guts. I smelled the disemboweled fowl cooking on spits arrayed above the fire—and took quick note there was no kitchen boy present—as the woman declared, “Agnes, by the rood, I told you to fetch herbs, not dawdle your heels. His lord and ladyship are already in their chambers preparing to receive our guest—” She came to a standstill. “Who might this be?”

  Agnes said, “Our guest. I found him outside the garden postern. He did not realize that we always lock that door by nightfall.”

  “Yes, I am Master Prescott,” I said haltingly to the woman, brushing my horse-soiled hands across my breeches and attempting to bow before I remembered she was also a servant.

  The woman was aghast. “But, you—you are supposed to be in your chamber. We serve supper in less than an hour! Agnes, you were to fetch him and bring hot water for his bath.” She directed her wrathful stare at the maidservant, who seemed not the least concerned as she proceeded to the table and deposited a handful of crumpled leaves from her apron pocket.

  “I did,” Agnes said. She turned to hang the key on a hook by the door. “The water must be cold by now. He was not to be found. What was I to do? Search the roke and be taken by sprites? You told me to fetch herbs for pies.” She pointed at the pile. “There they are.”

  “Well, I—I never…” Mistress Harper—for she must be the housekeeper—bulged with outrage until I said quickly, “It is entirely my fault. After greeting my lord Vaughan in the cemetery, I went to the stables to check on my horse and manservant. The time got away with me. My abject apologies; if you could direct me to my chamber, I promise to wash, change, and be in the hall promptly within the hour.”

  Mistress Harper clucked her tongue in disbelief. It reminded me of Alice, whenever I told a fib and she caught me in it, and made me warm to the housekeeper at once. I knew this sort of woman—efficient and solicitous, as Alice had been.

  “I doubt that,” she remarked but her gaze warmed in return. “But you must hurry along, regardless. My lady does not take to tardiness.” She jabbed her hand at Agnes. “Show him upstairs and return here at once. We still have these pies to garnish.”

  Agnes gave me a slithering look as she led me across an inner quadrangle separating the kitchens from the manor, through another door, and back down a passageway toward the hall, turning from the chapel to a main staircase leading to the upper floors. I noticed a faded tapestry adorning the balustrade. It must have been fine once, with hints of glittering silver threads that proclaimed it an expensive import from the looms of Burgundy or Flanders, but now it was as faded and neglected as the rest of the house.

  On the second floor, Agnes opened a door to reveal a simple chamber with an arrow-slit window set in the far wall, the room furnished with an oversized bed hung with a tester, a stool, a chair, and a chest for clothes. My saddlebags sat unopened on the chest. A smaller room off the bedchamber served as garderobe and privy; upon its chilly floor was a linen-lined tub filled with—as Agnes had supposed and a dip of my finger confirmed—cold water.

  I turned back to her. She lounged in the doorway, rolling the door key about her spindly finger. Her knuckles were red but not chaffed; for being the only maidservant I had seen in the house, she appeared remarkably unharried.

  “Shall I assist my lord in disrobing?” she asked with a sly affectation that set my teeth on edge. Insouciant and a slattern: I decided I did not care for Agnes at all.

  “No, thank you.”

  “As my lord wishes.” She dipped a shallow curtsey that offered me a good glimpse of small breasts tucked within her gaping bodice. She was about to turn away when my hand shot out and caught her thin wrist. She whirled on me.

  “The key,” I said, before she could issue another uninvited solicitation.

  Agnes cocked her head. “Lady Vaughan does not care for locked doors.”

  “Except for that garden postern,” I reminded her, and a flush crept into her concave cheeks. “The key, if you please. There are items in my saddlebag I must protect.”

  Her gaze darted toward my bag, even as she pretended to consider for a moment before she handed me the key. “As you wish, my lord. Lady Vaughan will not be pleased.”

  “I am sorry to have displeased her so much before I have even made her acquaintance,” I replied, “but as I said, I carry important items and my door must be locked when I am not in my room. And,” I went on, as her eyes narrowed, “I am not a lord. Master Prescott will suffice.”

  Before I shut the door, I gleaned covetous greed on her face.

  Oh, no, I did not care for Agnes at all. But resentful servants had eager tongues, and hers, I suspected, could be unloosed, if I had the need for it.

  I was late. As soon as I descended the stairs in my somber court doublet of muted green velvet, matching breeches, and dark hose, I heard voices in the hall and among them was the high tone of a noblewoman. Whatever distress Lady Vaughan had undergone at the death of her son had been set aside in lieu of her visitor, as I discerned the moment Gomfrey pompously and unnecessarily preceded me with the announcement of my arrival. I stepped into the hall to find Lady Vaughan with her husband before the fire-lit hearth.

  The candelabrum flickered with fresh tapers, as did the overhead chandelier, but this excess of light scarcely banished the brooding shadows at the walls, as though the hall had only reluctantly released its habitual gloom.

  As I bowed, I heard rustling skirts approach and looked up to find mys
elf appraised by a haughty figure dressed in a high-necked black gown of antiquated design, its sleeves voluminous and lined with squirrel pelt. She wore a crescent hood that revealed a seam of fair hair tucked underneath its rim, the seed pearls adorning the hood’s edge muted, of inferior quality.

  Lady Vaughan appeared at least ten years younger than her husband. She had been fine once, much like the tapestry on her stairs. Yet like that tapestry, her beauty had dissipated, her flesh pared so that her green eyes under plucked brows were like watery emeralds in an assiduously pale face that had rarely seen the sun. Her nose was arched, her bone structure angular. A slight slackness under her chin betrayed premature bitterness and encroaching age—though, judging by her demeanor, she must have inspired covert desire once, even if she had probably disdained it. I detected rank in her face and manner: she held herself as though she came from noble blood. If so, life here must have been a purgatory. Women like her were bred for court, to serve royal mistresses and marry into their own pack; they were not meant for decaying manors, wed to husbands with little to commend them.

  How had she ended up in Vaughan Hall?

  She held out a slender hand. “Master Prescott?”

  Taking her hand, I grazed it with my lips. “My lady, it is an honor.”

  Something dark flashed in her eyes. “Is it?” she said, and before I could reply, she pivoted like a damsel before a coterie of admirers to her husband. “He is most charming. But so young: You did not tell me he was so young, dearest Thomas.”

  Lord Vaughan muttered, “I did not think of it, Philippa. His age seemed irrelevant.”

  Their affectionate use of first names rang false but the smile she bestowed on me was definitely not. It was dazzling, seemingly welcoming yet tinged with malice.

  Lady Philippa Vaughan had the smile of a practiced predator.

  Again, this I had expected. I was the uninvited guest who had interrupted their mourning and personified the power of an unwanted queen. Nevertheless, it put me on guard. Why would she feel a need to disarm me, unless she was already prepared to deceive?