The Lady of Secrets Read online

  Praise for Susan Carroll

  Twilight of a Queen

  “Riveting, vibrant, and breathtaking.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “A super tale with strong adversaries and allies, and a terrific exhilarating story line.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Twilight of a Queen is a complex and dense story with many twists and turns.”

  —The Romance Reader

  The other books in the Dark Queen series

  “Carroll strikes a balance between froth and craftsmanship.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fast-paced historical fiction with a supernatural twist.”

  —Booklist

  “An intoxicating brew of poignant romance, turbulent history, and mesmerizing magic.”

  —KAREN HARPER, author of The Fyre Mirror

  “With a pinch of both the otherwordly and romance to spice up the deep look at the Medici era … Susan Carroll writes a wonderful historical thriller that will have the audience eagerly awaiting [the next] story.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  “[A] riveting tale of witchcraft, treachery, and court intrigue.”

  —Library Journal, Starred Review

  “Utterly perfect—rich, compelling, and full of surprises. A fabulous, feminist fantasy from a masterful storyteller that’s bound to be one of the best books of the year!”

  —ELIZABETH GRAYSON, author of Moon in the Water

  “Enthralling historical detail, dark and intense emotions and the perfect touches of the paranormal. [Carroll] leaves readers to savor every word of this superbly crafted breathtaking romance.”

  —Romantic Times, Top Pick!

  “Ms. Carroll sets the stage well for intrigue and magic spells and draws the reader into her web.”

  —The Historical Novels Review

  “Readers in the mood for a marriage plot spiced with magic should find that this one does the trick!”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A definite suspense thriller and a page-turning read.”

  —Book Review Cafe

  “Delightful … Susan Carroll writes a wonderful historical thriller.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  The Lady of Secrets is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2012 by Susan Carroll

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carroll, Susan.

  Lady of secrets : a novel / Susan Carroll.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53604-4

  1. Courts and courtiers—Fiction. 2. Mystics—France—Fiction.

  3 France—History—Henry II, 1547–1559—Fiction. 4. Historical fiction.

  5. Love stories. I. Title.

  PS3553.A7654L33 2012

  813′.54—dc23      2012032201

  Cover design: Victoria Allen

  Cover photograph: Malgorzata Maj/Trevillion Images

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Edinburgh 1591

  IT WAS A FAIR DAY FOR A BURNING.

  Maidred Brody had heard the guards talking just before dawn. The breeze coming off the firth was soft, a mere whisper to tickle the cheeks. Not nearly strong enough to make lighting the faggots difficult or to fan the flames away from the fodder they were meant to consume.

  The fodder. They were talking about her, her own too-tender flesh and fragile bones. As the voices drifted farther away from the narrow grate that marked her only contact with the world outside her cell, Maidred shuddered. She burrowed deeper beneath the filthy straw as though she were a field mouse escaping detection.

  But there was no escaping her thoughts. She rubbed her fingers over the tiny raised scar on her wrist where she had once burned herself on a hot kettle. The pain had been so intense she had wailed and carried on until her old nursemaid had given her a smack and commanded her sternly to stop raising such a fuss. If Maidred had been unable to tolerate that small burn, however would she endure being roasted alive, the greedy flames scorching and blackening her sensitive skin, peeling it away from her body?

  Tears streamed down Maidred’s cheeks. She shoved her fist in her mouth to stifle her sobs lest she wake her companion. But she doubted anything could disturb Tamsin.

  Although old Tam was under the same sentence of death as Maidred, the crone had slept like a babe last night. Her snores resonated across the cell although the pale morning light filtered through the grate. The last morning of their lives …

  Maidred trembled and rocked herself, trying to claw her way back to the pretty place inside her head that had sustained her through much of these last two years since her mother had died. A castle lost in the mists of a faraway island.

  “I am a princess in the court of the Lady of Faire Isle, a sorceress of great power and beauty,” she whispered to herself. “I live in her golden palace and wear gowns of gossamer silk. We have a hundred handsome knights to attend upon us, to protect us, to rescue—”

  The creak of the heavy oak door shattered the illusion, flinging her back to the cold hard floor of her cell. They were coming for her. So soon? She scrambled up, her heart thudding as her gaoler pushed open the door.

  Master Galbraith was a tall broad-shouldered man who had to duck beneath the lintel as he entered her cell. But for all his alarming size, his heavy jowls gave him the look of a sorrowful hound. He had been kind to Maidred ever since the dread sentence of death by fire had been pronounced against her. His gaze rested upon her with an expression of such pity, she felt tears start to her eyes all over again.

  She glanced wildly about her cell, seeking in vain for some escape. Unbelievably, Tam slumbered on as though she had not a care in the world.

  Maidred cowered back in the corner, pleading, “Please. Please don’t—”

  “Nae, lass,” Master Galbraith interrupted her soothingly. “Dinna ye distress yourself. Not yet. I but come to bring ye a visitor.”

  A visitor Maidred had been dreading and expecting. The priest who would pray with her, give her the last rites. She must be as wicked as the judge had proclaimed because she could not seem to regard the advent of this holy man as any comfort, only the harbinger of death.

  But it was not the dark-robed minister of the kir
k who crept into the cell. It was the one person Maidred had never expected to see again. Her brother.

  Maidred’s breath left her in a rush at the sight of Robert Brody, a lad not much taller than herself, his hair the same golden brown. But there the resemblance ended. Although they were twins and Maidred the elder by a matter of minutes, Robbie appeared far older than their fifteen years. Grief, care, and toil had chiseled all boyish softness from his gaunt features.

  Shadows pooled beneath eyes that had once sparkled with such teasing laughter, Maidred had called him her Robin Goodfellow. Back when they had played at knights, dragons, and faeries beneath the willows on the riverbank, halcyon childhood days so long ago Maidred feared she was the only one who remembered.

  Master Galbraith ushered her brother farther into the cell and then stepped aside. “This could cost me my post, lad, so I cannot allow ye more than a few minutes.”

  Robbie nodded, passing a lean purse to the gaoler. Maidred flinched. Her brother must have bribed Master Galbraith for this visit with some of his meager supply of coin, money that he had earned with backbreaking labor in the laird’s stable.

  The gaoler quit the cell, closing the door behind him. Maidred stiffened as her brother drew nearer. Never had she been so glad to see anyone, but she wished he had not come. She felt so ashamed she could scarce meet his eyes, guilt-ridden for the trouble that she had heaped upon his overburdened shoulders, mortified that he should see her thus, looking like some common slattern.

  How pathetic she must appear, her kirtle filthy from the effusions of her own body and the stink of the cell, a fetid mingling of urine, dung, and sweat. Her hair was matted and unkempt, her cheeks stained with her tears.

  A heavy silence fell, broken only by the snuffling noises Tam made in her sleep. Then Robbie breathed.

  “Good God, Maidred.”

  “I—I know. I must look a fright.” She attempted to smile for his sake, picking bits of straw from her hair. “But it has not been so bad. I just pretend that I am a princess who has to don a disguise for now lest—”

  “Stop it!”

  Maidred broke off, startled by the harshness of his voice. He seized her by the shoulders, his fingers gouging her skin.

  “Will you be at it, even now, spinning your ridiculous fantasies? What does it matter a damn how you look, you little fool?” He gave her a rough shake. “You are going to die today. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Y-yes, but it is not kind of you to remind me.” She glanced up at him and saw that his angry outburst was fueled by an anguish he could barely suppress. His eyes welled with tears.

  He pulled her close, hugging her so hard she thought he’d crack her ribs. She flung her arms about his neck, holding him as tight, just like they had done when they had been mere babes, frightened by a violent storm beating at the nursery windows. But this time there would be no wakening to a calmer, sunny morning.

  Robbie’s doublet smelled of the wide outdoors, sweet meadows and lake breezes, the kind of freedom she would never know again. Maidred whispered, “I am sorry, Robbie. So sorry.”

  He peeled her away from him, his eyes less angry than pained and confused. “I still don’t understand, May. That day when you admitted to taking part in the witches’ Sabbath, practicing evil spells against the king, I couldn’t believe it. I thought they must have tortured you to make you confess.”

  “No, I was guilty.”

  “But why? Why would you do such a thing?”

  Maidred spread her hands in a helpless gesture as she sought for words. Once, she and Robbie had been so close there was no need for any explanations. They had shared the same thoughts, the same feelings, and the same imaginings.

  But Robbie had long ago abandoned their kingdom of dreams for the harsh wilderness of the real world. He had never been the same since their father had died four years ago.

  Thomas Brody had been a wool merchant, prosperous enough to have ambitious hopes for his family, good marriages for his four daughters, a gentleman’s education for his son so that Robert might even aspire to a position at court one day, despite Thomas Brody’s Catholic leanings. The kirk had outlawed the old religion, but the young king James was known to be more tolerant, turning a blind eye to the religious practices of his favorites.

  But a storm had destroyed Papa’s small fleet and taken his life as well. That had been Maidred’s first experience with how fragile a vessel dreams could be and she had shrunk from reality.

  Debts had swallowed most of the Brody fortune, forcing them to leave their snug manor house. But Neve Brody had been a woman of strong and determined character, managing to turn even a humble cottage into a warm, comfortable home.

  She had taken in washing and mending to enable her family to survive, but as exhausted as Mama must have been, she had never abandoned their cherished nightly custom of gathering around the fire for one of her stories. Mama had always been a gifted weaver of tales and Maidred had sat at her mother’s feet, waiting as eagerly as her younger sisters.

  Only Robbie had refused to listen, eschewing such faery stories as childish nonsense, too somber and too full of his own importance as the new head of the family.

  To Maidred, it had felt like a betrayal. As much as she had mourned the loss of her father and their beautiful home, she had grieved even more the loss of her brother.

  She had not understood Robbie at all until two years ago when the typhus had swept through their village, carrying off both her mother and her youngest sister, Elsbeth. Maidred had little time to mourn before she had been obliged to assume all the burdens Mama had carried. The washing, cleaning, mending, cooking, baking, and caring for her other two sisters, Annie and Brenna. And she was so inept at all of it. The only thing she was good at was the weaving of stories.

  By nightfall she was too tired to do anything but weep into her pillow and there was no one to turn to for comfort and sympathy, certainly not her brother, who was working twice as hard as she.

  She knew these thankless unending chores were a poor woman’s lot in life, but she could not help wailing to herself. It wasn’t fair. She had been forced to become a woman, a mother, before she had the chance to finish being a girl. To know what it was like to be wooed, to be a bride—and without a dowry, these were things she would never experience.

  Her brother demanded to know why she had taken such a risk, dabbling in sorcery that cold November midnight. Maidred remembered that it had been a particularly trying day. She had burned the porridge, ripped an irreparable hole in her only decent frock, discovered their supply of potatoes had turned black and would not last the winter. Annie and Brenna had whined more than usual, Annie especially fretful because she was coming down with the ague. She had thrown up all over Maidred’s shoes.

  By the time Maidred had collapsed upon her cot, she had been pure exhausted. But she had still found the strength to steal from her bed hours later when the night was at its darkest, the moon hiding its face behind a veil of clouds. She had tiptoed past her sleeping siblings, crept out of the cottage, and raced to join in the forbidden revels being held inside the kirk. And why? For the most selfish and ignoble reason.

  She had just wanted a small taste of excitement in her life, a wee bit of magic. But there was no way she could make Robbie understand that and she was too ashamed to try.

  Moistening her lips, she said, “First off, you must know I would never have gone that night if I had known what was really going to happen, what wicked purpose—”

  “What did you think would happen? A coven of witches gathering in a church after midnight!”

  “I didn’t know they were witches. I thought they were wise women like in those stories Mama used to tell us about the beautiful Lady of Faire Isle.”

  “Stories, Maidred! There is no magical Lady of Faire Isle, no gifted wise women. Only witches or at least spiteful old crones who delude themselves they possess some dark powers.”

  “Not all of them. There truly are genuine cunn
ing women and there is much to learn from them. All about healing and useful white magic and even how to conjure the dead. Just think of it, Robbie. If we could contact Mama, see her, speak to her again.” Maidred regarded her brother wistfully. “Wouldn’t you want that too?”

  “No!”

  The vehemence of her brother’s reply took Maidred aback. “Why not?”

  “Because it would be unnatural, against the will of God.” Rob shuddered and crossed himself. “Even if it could be done, do you think I could ever face our mother after the way I broke my promise?”

  “What promise?”

  “I swore to Mama on her deathbed that I would look after my sisters always, keep you safe.”

  “Oh, Robbie. So you have done. You’ve worked yourself nigh to death keeping food on our table. And the time that angry dog came after us in the lane, you flung yourself in its way and you were the one who got bit. So brave, just like the noblest of knights.”

  Maidred cupped his cheek in a comforting gesture as her mother would have done. “That I have come to such a pass is not your fault, my dear Robin Goodfellow. It is all my own stupidity.”

  She could see from the iron set of his jaw, the pain in his eyes, that her words had no effect upon him. Her brother would carry the guilt of her death inside him until the end of his days. For that sin alone, Maidred feared she deserved to be burned.

  He curled his fingers around her wrist, holding on so tight, as though he would never be able to let her go. “I tried so hard to find a way to save you, May. I went begging to everyone I could think of, some of Father’s old friends from the guild, the bishop, the provost. I tried to explain that you had been led astray, that you meant no harm.”

  Robbie shook his head in despair. “They all said the same thing. There was naught to be done but pray for your soul and Master Galbraith said that all I could do was give you … this.”

  He released her and withdrew something from inside his doublet. Maidred expected that it might be a rosary or some holy relic. Just like Papa, Robbie adhered to the tenets of the Catholic faith.