Bardolf barked. I hushed him before I peered at where he stood, his stance alert, his tongue hanging out. He barked again. Lurching forward, I saw what lay directly under his paws.
A small trapdoor almost embedded in the quadrangle stone.
I leaned over to grab hold of its rusted handle. It was wet and slipped in my hand; I tugged at it until I felt my shoulders and arms burn. As I thought I would have to find another way inside—or better yet, relinquish my absurd notions and return to the manor and rest, so I’d be better equipped to deal with the lord and lady come morning—I heard the voice again. Only this time as I paused, crouched over the trapdoor, it came from above me: a chanting of sorts, like a child singing a defiant lullaby.
Bardolf’s ears perked. He too looked up, whining in his throat.
“You heard it, boy?” I said and he turned expectantly as if to urge me to hurry up with whatever I was doing. I raced back to the sagging awning over the stall with its utensils. Everything was rusty, decayed to near uselessness. A bellow of frustration lodged in my throat. Was there nothing in the entire manor that actually functioned as it should? Finally, after scavenging near the heaped barrels, I located an old shovel. It was hardly in better shape than anything else but I splashed through pools of mud back to the trapdoor, lodging the shovel under its handle and hauling upward with all my might.
I was breathless now with exertion, sweat sliding down my back to mingle with the rain and adding to the chill of my sodden clothes. I was going to catch a fever, sure as night; and if anyone came upon me with a shovel trying to dislodge a trapdoor they were going to think me mad, as well. Still, I tried again, pushing the chipped shovel farther under the handle. Looking at Bardolf, who had sat in apparent content to watch, impervious to the rain beading his coat, I pressed down hard until I heard my own gasp of pain escape me.
The shovel’s wooden handle broke, the ruptured part I held splintering and slicing my palm. With a curse, I flung the handle aside, sucking at the blood, when I saw I had cracked open the door just enough to see a crevice of darkness underneath it.
I went to my hands and knees, ignoring the dirt crusting my wound as I scraped and dug with the broken shovel around the door. After what felt like an hour of exhausting labor, I tried the handle again. It gave way a bit more, but still not enough. And the smell that wafted from within that small opening was putrid, making me think of dead things and compelling me to dig again, removing layers of caked dirt and moss even as the dreadful thought began to occur to me that a decomposing body might lie under here—Lady Parry’s own, perhaps.
The next time I grabbed the handle, I managed to pull the door enough to get my hand and arm through. I encountered empty space, cool and damp. It must be a root cellar like the one near the garden postern, where those barricaded in the tower would have stored their foodstuffs. There was a broken bolt on the door’s underside, too, which I felt with my fingers. It no longer worked, the passage of time and nature having sealed it to the door.
I went back to excavating, stopping only until I had to sit back on my heels, covered head to toe in grime. I had propped the door halfway open. I yanked at the handle again. The trapdoor finally gave way with a reluctant groan.
Bardolf was up, poking his nose eagerly into the opening. I had no idea what was down there and started to reach for his collar to detain him when he plunged inside with a joyous bark.
Dogs have a sense of danger, and he had not seemed perturbed in the least. Squeezing through the opening, which was wide enough for a basket but not much more, I dropped onto narrow steps leading into utter blackness, as if I were about to descend into a bottomless pit.
Above me, the tower was silent.
Whoever was up there knew someone else was here.
* * *
Ugh! I hate spiders. Abigail’s words returned to me as I crept down the stairs. I was woefully unprepared; I didn’t have a torch or even a stub of candle to light my path, even if I’d managed to keep the flint dry in the downpour, and my feet sloshed in my boots, making slurping sounds as I brushed against walls and careened around, expecting to stumble upon a corpse. The smell was dreadful, invading every part of me, yet as I forced myself to breathe through my mouth to mitigate the worst of it, I began to realize it was not the stench of decomposition but rather of human excrement. Perhaps the manor’s latrines emptied near here, and with the rain, filth had seeped up through the ground into the cellar. I could not determine if the floor was wet, given my already sopping state, but I did not bump into anything else and slowly managed to make my way toward a lighter square of black in the overall black space.
It was a low archway, which I hit hard enough with my forehead to see a burst of stars. Ducking down, I passed under it into a bare chamber no larger than a shed. To my left rose another flight of narrow steps like a spine from the inside wall. It was still too dark, but Bardolf was nowhere in sight, so I assumed he had climbed the staircase. Taking the steps two by two without looking down, for there was no balustrade and I nursed a queasy dislike of heights, I kept my gaze fixed upward; the stairs wound to what seemed the very top of the tower. Then I reached a landing and door; withdrawing my dagger from my boot, I tried the latch, and the door swung open onto another chamber, larger than the one at the foot of the stairs, but still cramped. A poorly mortared arrow slit in the far wall allowed the night to seep through it, along with enough light to illuminate the room and show there was nothing inside it.
I returned to the stairs. The silence proved unnerving. I could hear my own heart beating fast in my ears and the drip-drip of my wet cloak on the stone behind me. It probably was neither wise nor safe to have come here without my sword, but I steeled my nerve with the reassurance that Bardolf had not barked again or made any indication from above that there would be trouble. He must know whoever was singing, and I doubted Gomfrey or Lord Vaughan would be huddled inside this tower crying and reciting children’s songs during a storm.
It had to be Hugh, the mysterious secret friend. The Vaughans had deceived me. There was a boy hidden in their tower for some inexplicable reason—a child with whom Raff and their own son and daughter had played with, but whom they had not wanted me to discover. The explanation would come later. I would wring it from their throats if need be, but for now I was anxious to prove I wasn’t teetering on the edge of insanity, that I had been right in assuming there was indeed a secret hidden here; and if the Vaughans had lied about it, how could I trust that they told the truth about Lady Parry?
I reached another door, which stood ajar. Light glimmered inside from a lantern or candle. I had not imagined it. I had to pause, ease the clench in my chest.
Please, try not to scare him. He’s very shy.
If he was only a child, he would indeed be scared. Left here alone, he would be terrified to see me swagger in, smothered in dirt, like a fiend out of a nightmare. My attempts to brush the mud from my face were ineffective—I needed a thorough soaking in water and soap—but I did so anyway, even running my hands down my now-ruined tunic before I moved over the threshold.
Bardolf was lying on the stone floor, his tail wagging as he saw me standing there. My gaze took in everything at once—a large circular chamber, perched atop the tower under the peaked eaves, with a sagging cot in a corner, a tousled blanket over it, and a crooked stool and fruit crate upended on its side next to it. A wood trencher and askew lantern were on the crate, but the wick inside the lantern burned low, so that the light flickered and spluttered.
I did not see anyone. Taking another step inside, keeping one eye on Bardolf, I looked around. The chamber was the width of the tower’s circumference, the main room where the inhabitants would have tried to survive an attack on the manor. There was no place to hide.
Then I returned my gaze to the bed. The blanket was more than rumpled. As I stared at it, I saw a slight rise and fall, a quiver of substance under the bunched fabric.
Someone was hiding under it.
�
��I’m not going to hurt you,” I said softly, treading carefully to the bed, keeping the door behind me in case he bolted up and tried to escape. “I’m a friend. Abigail told me about you. I know you are Raff’s secret friend. I’m here to see you safe.” Even as I spoke in a manner I might have used to coax a potentially feral creature, I had no inkling the child could understand me, though he had played with the others and surely had some ability to communicate.
Coming to a halt, I saw the form under the blanket tremble, coiled upon itself in a knot.
I reached out to pull aside the blanket. A mop of ginger-colored hair showed; the sheen of tear-stained cheeks. I saw hands covering a face pressed into hunched knees.
“Hugh?” I whispered.
Taut silence fell. The boy stirred.
“You … you know my friend?” he asked, and Raff lifted his face to mine.
Chapter Seventeen
I could not speak for a bewildered moment. Raff regarded me with a plaintive, frightened cast in his eyes, and there was a quality to the light in the room, a subtle trace of shadow upon his face, that jolted me. He suddenly looked shockingly familiar.
“I don’t know Hugh,” I finally said, and as I heard the disappointment in my voice, I realized it should not matter. He was still a child, who had been cowering here over a day now. Someone in the house must have frightened him, sent him fleeing with an earful of threats and the order to hide from me. I stepped back a bit, to show him I meant no harm, and he sat up warily, eyeing me as if I might thrash him at any moment.
“Is your friend Hugh around here?” I asked, thinking perhaps the other child had also fled and was hiding somewhere in this tower.
He murmured, “Hugh always hides. He doesn’t like strangers.”
“Where does he like to hide?”
“He’s…” Raff did not seem to know how to explain. “He is here,” he finally said. “But he still hides.” He looked down at his bare feet. A vein in his temple twitched.
Raff’s friend is secret because you can’t see him.
I suddenly wondered at my own confusion. Hugh must be a figment of Raff’s imagination. The boy was undoubtedly strange but far from stupid. He had conjured an invisible playmate, as any boy in his situation would—to keep loneliness and fear at bay, to deflect the rejection and insults. He reminded me of myself at his age, with nowhere to belong, nothing to call his own, only I had had Alice. Until she left me, she had always been there to remind me that I meant something to someone in this unforgiving world.
“When the nice lady visits,” Raff finally said cautiously, “she always tells Hugh to hide until she can come for him.”
“Who is the nice lady?” I kneeled before him, without touching him. His hands were clasped in his lap; he had well-formed hands, marred with nicks and scrapes from his chores, but with long, slim fingers. “Are you speaking of Lady Parry?” I was guessing, but he started, looking at me again. “Do you know her, too?”
I nodded. “She is my friend. Might you or Hugh know where she is?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Lady Vaughan made her go away. Lady Parry told Hugh to wait for her. But she never came back.”
Lady Parry knew about Hugh? My confusion returned. It must have shown on my face, for with unexpected resolve Raff said, “Lady Parry says Hugh is special. She gave him a gift.” Climbing off the cot, he pushed past me to tug the cot away from the wall. Crouching down, I heard him scratching and peeped under the cot to see him prying a loose paving stone from the floor. He reached inside a hole and withdrew something. “See?”
I took the object, wrapped in a worn blue cloth bag. Untying its frayed cords, I upended it into my palm. A tarnished silver ring fell out, with an impressive cabochon sapphire embedded in it. “Where did you get this?” I asked, bemused.
With a patient sigh, Raff replied, “I told you. Lady Parry gave it to Hugh,” and he ran his fingertip along the ring’s edge. I heard a tiny click; the stone embedded in the ring popped up via an ingenious lever, revealing a miniature painted on its silver-backed underside.
It took me a moment to see what it was: a slender figure dressed in a red-gold gown, holding a book. Disbelief exploded inside me. I had seen a larger version of this very portrait hanging in Hatfield’s hall; I recognized the parted hair under the pearled hood, the narrow, almost elfin face, the enigmatic eyes—
“Dear God,” I heard myself whisper. “This is Elizabeth.”
Raff cocked his head. “The lady in the ring is called Elizabeth?”
I dragged my gaze to him. How had I not seen it before? In the shifting interplay of shadow and light cast by the ebbing lantern, his eyes were just like hers—a mercurial sable gold like a lion’s, so that at certain angles they appeared almost black, their slant more exaggerated in him but as heavy-lidded as hers. And his hands: He had her long, slim hands.…
My entire world capsized. I collapsed against the cot as if my bones had turned to liquid, my hand clutching the ring. I kept looking down at her tiny painted figure, a duplicate of a portrait she once told me had been painted when she was only fourteen years old.
“The nice lady,” I whispered. “Lady Parry, she—she brought Hugh this?”
He nodded. “Hugh likes to look at it when he is alone. But it is a secret.” He smiled. “I know how to keep secrets. Lady Parry told me to hide the ring for Hugh. She told me I must keep the ring and Hugh hidden at all times.”
When the nice lady visits she always tells Hugh to hide until she can come for him.
I was having trouble breathing. Hugh was Raff.
And Raff … he must be Elizabeth’s son.
Outside the tower, the wind keened. I had not heard it swooping about the eaves, so stunned by the revelation that everything beyond it ceased to exist. But as the sounds returned to me—rain shattering against the walls, the sizzle of the dying wick, and the soft, watchful panting of Bardolf on the floor—the danger of my predicament overcame me.
Lady Parry had disappeared because of this boy. He was the secret of Vaughan Hall.
I had to get him away from here.
Raff sensed my sudden disquiet. He backed away, toward Bardolf, who rose to his questing hand. I detected no aggression in the dog’s stance but I knew that if I tried to harm the boy in any way Bardolf would probably defend him.
“We must leave now,” I said to Raff. “Can you do that with me?”
He went pale. “I cannot leave. Lady Parry says I live here. This is my home.”
“What about Hugh? Doesn’t he want to meet the lady in the ring? Her name is Elizabeth and I know her. She is also my friend. Can you ask Hugh if he will leave with me?”
The boy went still. It was the confirmation I needed, if I still harbored any doubt. Shattered by everything that had been done to him, Raff had devised an alternate self, a secret named Hugh, someone who could be his companion and whom he could share with the other children—an imaginary friend who was, in fact, all too real.
“We can bring the lady in the ring with us.” I returned the ring to its bag, showed it to him, and then carefully inserted it into the inner pocket of my cloak. “See? She’ll be safe here.”
Raff remained immobile, his hand on Bardolf. I was dreading the thought of seizing him against his will, if I could even manage it without fending off the mastiff, when, to my immense relief, he nodded. He still seemed uncertain but no longer afraid.
“Hugh wants to go.”
He turned to the door. Bardolf stretched out his front legs, emitting an enormous yawn that gave me a full view of the bone-crushing size of his maw, and padded after the boy. Raff looked at me from the door. “Are you coming?”
Jerking forward, I took him by the hand.
* * *
He was frightened of the storage room. He refused to go near it and wanted to bring me the other way, through another opening, which I had failed to notice in the wall of the lower chamber—a ragged hole that must lead into the tunnels Abigail had mention
ed. Raff must have come in and out of the tower through those tunnels, but I had only to look at the opening to know I would never get through it. Though I was not a large man, it was too small for anyone bigger than Raff—which explained why no one else used it save for him and the Vaughan children.
Only after I reassured him that Bardolf had been in the storage room and look, he wasn’t scared, did Raff allow me to take him in my arms, wrap my cloak about him, and bring him up the stairs through the trapdoor.
The rain pelted. With him against me, I staggered and stumbled through the quadrangle to the kitchens. Here, he stiffened again, saying anxiously, “I am not allowed anywhere in the house. Lady Vaughan says stable boys do not sleep indoors.”
“Lady Vaughan is asleep,” I said. “Close your eyes.” I felt him settle his cheek against my shoulder. The ferocious need to protect him gave me strength as I tiptoed into the fire-lit kitchens, Bardolf behind. Unhooking the key to the root cellar, I unlocked the door and moved into the passage through which Agnes had brought me, praying the other trapdoor in the cellar would require the same key. Setting Raff down, I unlocked it with a sigh of relief and we dashed up the steps into the garden.
He refused to let me pick him up again. He seemed relieved now that we were outside the manor, and as I led him toward the stable block, he asked, “Where are we going?”
“Far away,” I told him. “You will go with my manservant, Scarcliff. He looks like an ogre but he is strong and brave. He will protect Hugh almost as well as you have.”
Raff quavered, “He … he will not hurt me like Master Godwin? He kicked me when he saw me playing with Master Henry. He said I should be drowned.”
“I promise you he’s not anything like Master Godwin.” Raff’s words clarified why he had fled to the tower. The crippled tutor had mistreated him and Shelton’s limp must have been noticeable to his keen eyes. He had associated it with the previous abuse inflicted on him.
The Tudor Vendetta Page 18