I let her down. I had no experience with young children, but she seemed to me a sad waif in her sodden gown and cloak, her hair tangled in braids. She was also shivering; by the looks of it, she had been outside for too long.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” I said gently. “It’s starting to storm and the wind can be dangerous. What if it lifted you up and carried you away like your snood?”
She raked her foot back and forth on the ground. “Nobody would mind,” she muttered. “They loved my brother best.”
“I think your father would mind. He would miss you very much, I suspect.”
Her solemn eyes lifted to contemplate me. “Yes, but he misses Henry more. I can tell. He cries a lot when he thinks no one is looking and he drinks too much. My lady mother shouts at him all the time. She says she should never have married him.”
My heart went out to her. Girls were rarely prized like boys, for sons inherited while daughters wed and became their husband’s chattel. I wondered what would happen to Abigail. Her circumstances were hardly conducive to a decent marriage, let alone personal happiness. Once again, anger at Lady Vaughan gripped me. Was the woman so callous that she would leave her own daughter to wander about like this, mourning her brother and subjected to cruel remarks not meant for her ears?
“Your mother is grieving,” I said, trying to reassure her. “People sometimes say terrible things when they are hurting.”
She turned wistful, gazing at the mausoleum. “I miss Henry. He always played with me. Now, he’s not here and there’s no one to play with us.”
“Us?” I crouched down beside her. “Who else do you play with besides Henry?”
She shrugged. “We used to play with Raff, until Master Godwin came to teach us and our lady mother said we couldn’t play with him anymore. She hates Raff, too. She says he’s a … a bastard?” Her brow crinkled. “Is that the right word?”
I nodded. “It is. But it’s not a nice thing to call someone. Did Master Godwin like Raff? Was he kind to him?”
Her frown deepened. “Raff was afraid of him.”
“He was? Why do you think he was afraid?”
She hunched her shoulders. “Master Godwin hit him once across the head and said he was a cur. After that, Raff kept away from him.” She brightened with that unexpected urge to share that children display. “Henry and I would play games with Raff and his friend. It was fun.”
“Friend?” My breath turned shallow. “He has a friend?”
“Oh, yes, but I’m not supposed to tell. We promised Raff, Henry and me. It’s a secret.”
“I can keep a secret,” I said. Around us, the storm gathered force, the intermittent rain and flurries of snow starting to fall steadily. I had to pry this from her before I was obliged to bring her inside; I was surprised no one had come looking for her, but they would soon enough. “I know several secrets myself,” I added. “In fact, just between you and me”—I hushed my voice in a way that I sensed she would respond to—“I am also a secret.”
She giggled. “You are not! I can see you, so you cannot be a secret. Raff’s friend is secret because you can’t see him.”
“Oh? Is he … invisible?”
Abigail nodded, leaning to me. She smelled of wet earth and damp wool. “He hides in the tunnels under the manor. He lives over there.” She pointed past my head. I turned to look; she was indicating the squat watchtower on the western side of the manor.
“In the tower? Raff’s friend lives all alone up there?”
“Yes.” She clasped her hands in eager delight that she could confide something she had once shared with her brother. “He’s shy. Raff says he cannot be seen by anyone because he’s afraid the evil king will kill him.” She sighed. “I can’t visit him now that Henry is gone.”
“You could take me.” I wanted to grab her by the hand and force her to lead me there that instant. I would have thought it a mere child’s tale, make-believe to pass the time in this forsaken place, were it not that from what I knew of him, I doubted Raff could have concocted such a story on his own. He surely was illiterate; and who would have cared enough about him to dandle him on his lap and recite such a fanciful fable?
Abigail said emphatically, “I cannot take you. The tunnels scare me. It’s dark and there are too many spiders.” She shuddered. “Ugh. I hate spiders.”
“Me, too. I do not like spiders or the dark. But if we go together, we won’t be afraid.”
“No. I cannot.” Her face shuttered again. “I am cold. Can I go inside now?”
“Yes, of course.” Coming to my feet, I forced out a smile. “Let me take you.”
“You don’t have to.” She pulled her cloak about her. “I know the way. The postern door is over there.” Turning around to leave, she paused. She cast a shy look at me. “His name is Hugh. Please, if you go visit him try not to scare him. He’s very shy.”
Tugging at her damp skirts sticking to her legs, she scrambled through the cemetery to the manor, leaving me standing there under the rain, my cap dripping about my ears.
I had finally discovered the secret of Vaughan Hall.
A child was hidden in the tower.
* * *
I could not wait to tell Shelton, but when I arrived at the stables, drenched to my very skin, I found him seated on the hay pile, nursing his stomach. To my surprise, the mastiff Bardolf lolled next to him with an adoring look on his massive face.
“Raff hasn’t come back yet?” I asked, and Shelton grimaced.
“No, he hasn’t. And lest you are wondering, I am feeling much better.”
“I am sorry.” I sat beside him, told him what I had learned. When I finished, he gave me a skeptical arch of his brow. “Children make up tales. It’s hardly proof of anything untoward.”
“Do you not see?” I said, as Bardolf thumped his tail under Shelton’s caress. “She said the friend’s name is Hugh. He lives in the tower. How can that not be proof?”
Shelton belched. He may have been feeling better but he did not look it. “I don’t see how a children’s game can tell us about whatever mishap happened to Lady Parry.” He tried to shake his head but it evidently still hurt, for he winced. “You have your answer. Hugh is a make-believe friend. He’s not real, while what happened to Lady Parry is quite a different matter.” He let out a troubled sigh. “Call the spade by its name, lad.”
“What does that mean?”
“That Lady Parry is dead.” He held up his hand to cut off my protest. “Be reasonable. I know this place seems like a far corner of hell—and after what happened to me, I share your opinion—but is it not more likely she and this Godwin went to fetch a physician and were ambushed by brigands? The entire realm fell apart after Mary took the throne—not that it was safe to begin with. I think they fell afoul of men like those who came after us and we shall never know what happened to them. I think it is time for us to leave. There is nothing left for us to do here except kick up our heels.”
I started to come to my feet in furious incredulity, until Bardolf, sensing my abrupt move, growled. “The beast has a liking for me,” remarked Shelton. “He hasn’t left my side since you came back. At least something here cares if I puke or die.”
I bunched my fists at my sides. “What about that hooded rider we both saw on the horizon or the message that wretch imparted before he died? What about the attempt on the queen, the notes, and now this, your own near death? Someone must be behind this!”
“Why?” His quiet question made me even angrier. He was only speaking his mind, and much as I wanted to refute or deny him, he was making more sense than I cared to admit. “Maybe you only want to believe there is some plot because she put you to this errand. She asked you to help her, and you—as you have from the day you met her—feel obliged to fulfill her request at any cost. No,” he said gruffly, again overriding my protest. “I know you’re going to say that I never cared for her, and you would be right. Queen or not, Elizabeth attracts trouble wherever she goes. She is no
t like you and me, lad. She is a Tudor.”
“I too share her blood,” I retorted, stung by his words that reminded me uncomfortably of what Kate had said before I left court. “Have you forgotten it?”
“I could never forget it. You are her kin and you must be loyal. I admire you for it. But this isn’t like those other times when you helped her. People have accidents; they die or disappear. Ale gets fouled; thieves assault travelers; assassins try to poison queens. It happens, but it does not mean anyone here hides a secret. It does not mean…” His voice faltered.
“Say it,” I whispered.
“It does not mean Lady Parry’s disappearance has to do with Sybilla.” He went silent, watching me as I gritted my teeth.
“You think I am imagining it,” I said at length. “You think I’ve spun a delusion to deal with my guilt because I failed to capture her before she leapt off the bridge.”
“I think despite everything, you have a passion for her you cannot escape. You want this to be a plot so you can avenge what she did to you and Peregrine, though you know as well as I do that while you hunt a ghost, whoever seeks harm on the queen remains at large and you are no closer than you ever were to apprehending him. You should be at court, working together with Cecil and the others to find him, not wasting time here searching for secrets that do not exist.”
I turned away. “I’ll see that food brought to you. You must rest and regain your strength.”
Shelton grunted, but he did not try to argue or call me back.
Once he had spoken the truth as he saw it, he invariably stood by it.
* * *
The storm erupted with a torrential downpour and iron clashing of thunder.
Inside the manor, I ate alone in the hall, served a trencher of cold remnants from the previous night’s feast by downcast Mistress Harper, who informed me Master Gomfrey had not returned yet from Withernsea and his search for a replacement for Agnes. Lord Vaughan and her ladyship, she added, had elected to remain in their rooms.
This parsimonious display had a deliberation to it that outraged me. I was being treated like a troublesome errand boy, forced to idle while they hid away in the hope I would grow tired, throw up my hands, and leave. I ate what I could, drank my fill of gritty well water (I wouldn’t touch a cup of wine or ale), and then climbed the stairs to my chamber, where I found myself deliberating what I had learned thus far, as well as Shelton’s unwelcome advice.
Was there a child hidden in the tower? Or had Abigail merely imparted a game she had made up with two older boys? Maybe she was confused, and Henry had devised the tale of Hugh, an invisible friend. It made perfect sense, far more so than concealing a child; but something in my gut told me it was not so simple. There was a mystery here in Vaughan Hall. I knew it. It was right under my nose and it all somehow connected to the stranger, who in turn had a connection to the past. I must resolve it. Lady Parry’s very life could depend on it.
I lay back, pillowing my hands, staring up at the timber-beamed ceiling. I played the events again, backward in my head. The discoveries I had made since arriving here, about Lady Vaughan’s familial past and possible link to Sybilla, who had also suffered losses during the Pilgrimage of Grace; the attack on the road by those ruffians and the stranger watching us; and further back, to the opening of the gifts in Elizabeth’s apartments and the horrifying death of her spaniel. I saw Kate once more, terrified with the glove in her hand as I searched the upended box for clues. I dwelled on the note in cipher, sent to Dudley’s seer, and Elizabeth’s subsequent summons and the tattered message she had shown me.
You must pay for the sin.
Leaping up, I paced the room. What did it mean? What sin did this stranger seek to avenge and what link did he have to the woman everyone believed was dead and Vaughan Hall? I raked my hands through my hair. At my bedside, the tallow started to gutter. These seemingly disparate incidents must hold something in common. How could they not?
But, I suddenly thought, what if Shelton was right? Did I hunt a ghost from my past even as a murderer stalked the queen, and Lady Parry and Godwin lay in a wood somewhere, pecked over by crows?
The very possibility was chilling. It took a few moments to realize the tallow had gone out but when I turned to strike flint to it, I realized a vague glow still illuminated the room. Looking upward to the arrow-slit window, I saw muted light refracting off the thick pane, distorting it so that it flickered into my room like an eerie nimbus.
I was not tall and the window slit proved too high for me. Dragging the clothes chest to the wall, I perched on tiptoes, straining to look out. I grasped the latch and yanked it, but years of sea salt and grit had sealed it shut. Cursing, I went to fetch my poniard to dig into the crevices about its edges, not thinking of how I would explain the blade gouges in the stone, until I heard the latch pop and I yanked the leaded pane ajar. Gripping the sill with my hands, I pulled myself upward with my feet dangling, to peer through the slivered opening.
I found myself staring through rain and fog at the tower of the manor—a toadstool silhouette I could barely discern.
Faint light wavered there.
In the uppermost part of the tower, flame glowed.
I did not hesitate. Pulling on my soiled travel clothes, I cracked open the door, wincing as its hinges creaked. I peered into the corridor. No one was about. Easing my way toward the staircase, I no longer cared if the storm raged or was teeming with goblins. Someone was indeed in that tower and I must find out whom.
A growl froze me in my tracks. In the penumbra, I saw Bardolf, poised like a sentinel at the landing of the stairs. I did not move. He growled again, with a menace that I knew I should heed. I started to shift backward when he bounded toward me with heart-stopping swiftness.
I ripped my dagger from its sheath, braced for his assault. He came within inches of me, his breath rank and meaty. I liked dogs; I did not want to kill one, especially not the lord’s pet. Bardolf lowered his ogre-like head to sniff my boots. I half expected his jaws to chomp on my foot, forcing me to plunge my blade between his shoulders, but after a thorough examination of the smells impregnated in my boot, he looked up, drooling, and nudged me with his snout.
“There now,” I whispered. “Good boy.” I did not dare touch him back, but he seemed assured that I posed no threat and let me move past him. I heard him padding behind me, a heavy clicking of nails on the floorboards, and though I would have preferred he remained where he was, I figured having him at my side as I went about my business might serve me well. He would certainly alert me to anyone, or anything, that lurked in the night.
I could not leave by the main entrance. A heavy iron bar had been lowered across the double doors, which I would have to lift, making enough noise to wake the entire house. Turning past the empty hall, I tried to remember the way Agnes had led me from the kitchens, thinking there must be access to the tower from the inner quadrangle. Abigail had spoken of tunnels, but I had no idea where to find them, even if I were inclined to go looking for underground passages in the middle of the night.
Electing to use the same corridor to the chapel, I proceeded cautiously, moving through deep shadow. I could barely see anything before me, but Bardolf’s assured pace at my heels seemed to indicate I moved in a direction familiar to him. Surely, he must require some means to get outside to relieve himself; I could not fathom fastidious Lady Vaughan tolerating dog piss in her rushes, and soon enough, to my relief, colorless illumination beckoned—a postern door left ajar to the quadrangle, the same one through which Agnes had brought me from the root cellar.
I stepped into a clammy netherworld. The rain had ebbed, summoning in its wake a shroud of fog tainted by brine, muffling sounds, and shapes. I now understood Gomfrey hadn’t sought to intimidate me. In such a dense miasma, it would be all too easy to lose my way and end up tumbling into a void to my demise. Pausing to take stock of my surroundings and allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom, I picked my path across the quadrangle. Things
I had not noticed in my haste to escape from the root cellar with Agnes now loomed like fragments of petrified monsters—a broken coach, half capsized, with wheels sunk in hardened mud; barrels heaped in a haphazard pyramid; a makeshift awning over a stall for repairing objects. My heels crunched upon a soggy mixture of old gravel, sand, and dirt pooled on flagstone; I could barely hear my own footsteps but in my heightened awareness, I imagined they echoed like a giant’s.
Bardolf dashed ahead. I clamped down on my cry to stop him as he vanished into the murky night, and I came to a halt, anticipating a sudden scuffle. When nothing happened, I moved on, nearing the tower, which grew larger and more forbidding than it seemed from a distance. All of a sudden, I was before it, staring at its rounded stone ribs, up to that single glowing window tucked under a decrepit peaked roof.
In the dripping silence, I thought I heard weeping. I paused, shutting out every other sense to amplify it. It was too faint to establish a definitive gender; but it sounded to me like a child, and as I made my way around the tower until I reached the adjoining manor wall, moving away from the window, the weeping faded. I knew then that I had definitely not imagined it. But when I rushed back to the spot, it was gone. So was the faint light, as if it had never been.
I started back around the tower, seeking an entrance until I located a door, square-cut and inset high above me, accessed by a shattered wooden staircase that clung like a cobweb to the tower side. The tower must have once functioned as refuge against a siege; but it had long since fallen into disrepair. The steps hung rotted, skeletal. Even if I could leap up and grab hold of the bottom rung, it would not support me. The entire dilapidated structure would crumble under my weight and send me crashing to injury or death.
I heard Bardolf return, his panting labored. He slipped past me to sniff at the ground. He paused, lifting his leg and jettisoning urine, and started snuffling once more.
“You make a fine watchdog,” I muttered. Thunder grumbled in the distance. The rain resumed, not as hard as before but enough to make me wish I had not forgotten my cap. It was the bane of my life, this penchant for not having a cap at the most inopportune times, and I started to chuckle under my breath, thinking this was a fine to-do, roaming about at night in a storm, seeing strange lights and hearing disembodied cries from a tower which no doubt had stood deserted for ages.
The Tudor Vendetta Page 17