The Lady of Secrets Read online

  “His Majesty swears he will never forget that old witch’s evil countenance. He has seen her on a number of occasions, clamoring for alms in the company of a blind beggar woman at the crossroads, spying upon him from a copse of trees when he was hunting. Once he even saw her lurking outside the palace walls at Whitehall.”

  “And did anyone else ever see her?”

  “Well, no. The king did send his yeoman guards after her, but she had vanished into thin air.

  “Like a ghost,” Sir Patrick added uncomfortably. When Meg made an impatient sound, he asked, “You do not believe the dead can rise from their graves?”

  Meg longed to declare that she didn’t, but she was haunted by the memory of Cassandra Lascelles waving her gaunt white hands over her steaming copper basin, conjuring forth the vision of some terrifying spirit.

  “I do not discount the possibility of a ghost,” Meg said. “But I think it far more likely your king suffers from delusions of the mind. Perhaps he is finally having an attack of conscience over all of those women he burned.”

  “Or an attack brought on by a witch’s curse.”

  “Either way, I am not sure why you are telling me all of this.”

  Sir Patrick halted and turned to face her. “Because I was hoping you would return with me to London and use your extraordinary powers to help His Majesty.”

  Meg stared at him, incredulous. “If you were hoping that, sir, I fear you are infected with the same madness as your king.”

  “It is not madness. Indeed, there is precedence for such a thing. When the late Queen Elizabeth was threatened by an enemy trying to hex her, she consulted a magus, Dr. John Dee.”

  “That was entirely different. Dr. Dee was Elizabeth’s astrologer and tutor and yet there came a time when he had to flee England to escape charges of sorcery. If such a thing could befall a man who was the queen’s trusted confidant for years, how do you think I would fare with a king who is notorious for burning witches? Since James Stuart came to the English throne, I hear that your laws against witchcraft are more stringent than ever.”

  “Nay, I assure you the king is much wiser than he was in his youth, much more careful about leveling accusations of sorcery. The harsher laws against witches are due to parliament rather than the king.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel so much better,” Meg said tartly. “I would only risk running afoul of the entire English government.”

  “The king would answer for your safety. I will admit His Majesty does not often seek advice from any woman, but these recent disturbing events have made him desperate.”

  “Then he should rely upon his own ministers and officials to investigate.” Meg resumed walking, wanting to put an end to this disturbing proposal, but Sir Patrick kept pace beside her, his voice low and persuasive.

  “None of them possess your skill or your knowledge of the supernatural.”

  “What if this has nothing to do with the supernatural? It seems to me far more likely that someone is playing some malicious jest upon His Majesty with the design of tormenting him or seeking revenge. Did this Tamsin Rivers have any family?”

  “She may have had some granddaughters. There were two young women rumored to have attended her execution, but if so, they fled Edinburgh shortly thereafter.”

  “Very prudent of them. It is never healthy to have a witch for a grandmother.” Or a mother, Meg thought bleakly.

  “Of course, there was also the other woman Tam spoke of at her trial. She heaped scorn upon the notion that she was in the service of the Earl of Bothwell or even the devil. ‘I serve no man,’ she boasted. ‘I serve no one but my mistress, the greatest sorceress who ever lived, Megaera.’ ”

  Meg steeled her countenance not to react, but she could not help flinching at the sound of her former name.

  “You have heard of this witch?”

  “No, I—I—” If Sir Patrick had not given her such a shock, Meg might have been able to make a plausible denial. Instead she stammered, “Well, yes, there—there have always been these stories about a sorceress called the Silver Rose. Nothing but ridiculous myths, I am sure.”

  “The Silver Rose. But that could explain a great deal.”

  “Explain what?” Meg asked sharply.

  “The report given by one of the guards the king sent out to seize Tamsin Rivers when she appeared in the courtyard. He could locate no trace of her, but on the ground, he found a curious scattering of petals, but like none he had ever seen. The rose petals glittered as though they were coated with silver.”

  Meg felt the color drain from her face.

  “You have gone so pale.” Sir Patrick peered down at her. “Are you unwell?”

  Meg moistened her lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “I—I am fine. It is only I—I must have forgotten my cloak back at the inn and I was struck with a sudden chill.”

  “Here. Allow me.”

  Before Meg could protest, he swept off his cape and draped it about her shoulders. The fabric was warm from his body heat and redolent of sandalwood. He did up the silver clasp at her neck and touched his hand to her cheek.

  “Better?” he asked with a smile.

  “Yes. I thank you.” She was aware that her heartbeat had quickened and she tried to draw away, feeling embarrassed. But he caught both of her hands in the warmth of his grasp.

  “If you would consent to return with me to England, you would travel under my protection. I would spare no effort to see to your safety and comfort. You cannot imagine how much I need—how much the king needs you. Will you come?”

  Their gazes locked and Meg felt dangerously drawn by the plea in his deep blue eyes.

  “I don’t know. I need time to think.”

  “I wish I could allow all the time you require, but as you must understand, this is a matter of some urgency. I can afford to linger here but one more day. If you could give me your answer by this evening?”

  Meg nodded, turning away from him. She realized she had broken her promise to Seraphine and wandered well out of view of la Mère Poulet’s makeshift hut.

  Quickening her pace, she outstripped Sir Patrick on the walk back or perhaps he lingered behind on purpose to allow her time to mull over all that she had heard. Meg huddled beneath the cape, grateful for its enveloping warmth. She was still chilled by the revelation of Old Tam’s boast.

  “I serve no one but my mistress, the greatest sorceress who ever lived, Megaera.”

  Meg struggled to recall all those times her mother had forced her to appear before the Silver Rose devotees, Meg sweltering in heavy robes and wearing a crown as though she had been a queen. Seated upon a throne so high her feet had not even touched the floor, Meg had been obliged to extend her small hand while the members of the coven had knelt to her and pledged their homage.

  Try as she might, Meg could not recollect anyone who had been named Tamsin Rivers. But that was hardly surprising. There had been far too many of those deluded women her mother had recruited to the banner of the Silver Rose.

  After the drowning of Cassandra Lascelles, the coven had scattered, fleeing from both witch-hunters and the Dark Queen’s soldiers. Was it possible that one of them had managed to escape as far away as Scotland?

  It shouldn’t matter because Old Tam was dead. Meg could not believe her spirit had risen to torment the king and carry out her curse. But someone was doing so, someone very much alive and possessing knowledge of the coven, someone with the ability to coat roses with a silver sheen.

  Who? Meg shivered, too afraid to consider a certain possibility. Lost in the turmoil of her thoughts, she did not notice Armagil Blackwood until he loomed in her path. Unable to check her steps, she collided with him. It was like walking into a granite wall and she stumbled back. He seized her shoulders to steady her.

  “Whoa! Watch where you are—” He broke off as he caught sight of her face. “What the devil’s the matter with you, woman? You look like you have seen a ghost.”

  He had no idea. Meg had to suppres
s a hysterical urge to laugh. She stammered some excuse about having walked too far and being tired, but Blackwood didn’t appear to listen.

  His gaze riveted on Sir Patrick’s cape draped about her shoulders and one of his brows lifted. Meg was annoyed when her cheeks heated. She shrugged away from Blackwood and self-consciously smoothed the folds of the fabric.

  Before he could make some irritating remark, Meg asked, “How is Hortense?”

  “I have persuaded her to go to Faire Isle and Madame la Comtesse is helping the old lady gather up her things. That should not take long, but you had better make haste before Hortense changes her mind. Both of you need to head for that island of yours. And stay there!”

  There was no mistaking the edge behind Blackwood’s last three words or the sharp look he gave her.

  “I imagine you are aware of what Sir Patrick has asked me to do,” she said.

  “I am and he did so against my counsel.”

  “But he said the king—”

  “The king be damned. Go back to Faire Isle and forget all of this. Don’t meddle in what is none of your concern.” Blackwood spoke so harshly and looked so angry, Meg retreated a step.

  “Is that your advice or a warning?”

  “Take it how you will. I make no claims to any nobility or chivalry. But occasionally, I am prompted by the better angel of my nature, although I rarely heed her whisper anymore.” Despite his anger, something bleak dulled his eyes. “But you would be wise to do so.”

  He strode away before Meg could question him, heading back up to Hortense’s hut. He brushed past Seraphine, who had arrived in time to hear his last remark.

  She regarded Meg suspiciously. “Wise to do what? What is going on, Meg? What did Graham want with you?”

  Meg longed for more time for quiet reflection, but she saw no way of avoiding Seraphine’s questions. She related the conversation between her and Sir Patrick as succinctly as possible, while bracing herself for the inevitable explosion.

  She had barely reached the end of her tale before Seraphine shrieked at her. “Have you taken complete leave of your senses? What do you mean, you need time to consider your answer? There can be only one reply to such a mad request. Hell and damnation, no!”

  “It is not that simple.”

  “Yes, it is.” Seraphine paced up and down, flinging out her arms in a wild gesture as though mere words were not enough to express the depth of her outrage. “Risk your neck by traveling all the way to England to save James Stuart from his own demons? Why? You know what that man is. Among other things, he is the author of a treatise on how to detect and examine witches. His Daemonology might as well be a witch-hunter’s bible.”

  “I know. I read it upon Ariane’s advice. She believed it wise to make a study of the superstitions and misunderstanding regarding witchcraft.”

  “She told me to read it, too. I got as far as the first chapter before I tore it to bits and threw what was left into the fire.”

  “James Stuart was a young man when he wrote the book. Sir Patrick believes the king has grown wiser.”

  “Wiser how?” Seraphine scoffed. “Has he honed his talents for tormenting and burning innocent women? He seems to me skilled enough. He is already responsible for the death of too many.”

  “Nonetheless—”

  “There is no ‘nonetheless’ this time, Meg. I know you feel obliged to investigate any rumor involving your mother’s old coven, but—”

  “I fear it is more than a rumor this time. The king has most likely imagined seeing Tamsin Rivers, but those silver petals the king’s guard found were very real.

  “That guard was fortunate it was only the petals and not the rose itself with its poisonous thorn. A most deadly toxin, it produced a terribly painful, lingering death. Even among the coven, there were few Maman trusted to brew it. It was a difficult potion to get right and I hoped … I believed everyone who knew how to do so was dead.”

  Meg bit down upon her lip. “Sir Patrick mentioned something else that alarmed me, although he could not know the significance of it. He said the king believed he saw Tamsin Rivers in the company of a beggar woman, a blind beggar woman.”

  Seraphine halted her pacing to stare at her. “Oh, Meg! You cannot be imagining that your mother might be behind all of this? That Cassandra Lascelles is still alive? You saw her drown.”

  “No, I saw her vanish beneath the waters of the Seine, but her body was never found. I presumed she was dead, but a part of me has always wondered and feared.”

  “But if somehow she had survived, she would have surely tried to come after you. You were her only daughter, her only hope of making her mad dreams come true.”

  “You forget my father hid me away in England for a time and then I came to live under Ariane’s protection on Faire Isle. And Maman was so disgusted with me. She had come to think me unworthy of being the Silver Rose. What if she gave up on me, but not her dream of a sorceress ruling the world in place of kings? What if she has been alive and plotting all this while?”

  “Ah, don’t do this, Meggie.” Seraphine caught Meg by the shoulders. Her grip was firm, but her voice was unusually gentle. “Do not torment yourself with these wild imaginings. Do not let Sir Patrick and his tales of his stupid mad king make you afraid again.”

  “I have never stopped being afraid of my past, ’Phine. I have only managed to suppress it. If I went to England, it would not be for the sake of Sir Patrick or his king. It would be for me, to lay my own ghosts to rest.”

  “If? You sound as if you have already made up your mind.”

  Meg realized that she had, but she said nothing, her silence speaking for her.

  “All right, then. I have just one more question,” Seraphine said.

  Meg braced herself for more of her friend’s fierce arguments, but Seraphine just emitted a defeated sigh.

  “When do we leave?”

  Chapter Seven

  THE ORION CUT A PATH THROUGH THE MUDDY WATERS OF THE Thames, the tide and the rhythm of the galley oarsmen pulling the vessel steadily upriver. Meg was able to make her way to the port-side rail without the deck pitching beneath her feet as it had done during the rough crossing of the English Channel and around the coast through the North Sea.

  The sun had barely arisen, the distant banks still wreathed in mist. The only other people stirring above deck were members of the crew and the other passenger who was not of Sir Patrick’s traveling party.

  John Johnston had come aboard at St. Malo. He introduced himself as an agent for a wool merchant in London whose master had sent him to the Low Countries in hopes of establishing new markets. A tall man with thick reddish-brown hair and a bushy beard, he preferred to keep to himself, which suited Meg. Johnston’s rigid manner and cold eyes rendered her uncomfortable.

  The rough passage had not affected Meg as adversely as Seraphine, but she was grateful to find herself in calmer waters. The air this morning was brisk with the hint of an early autumn. Meg had forgotten her cloak, but she was reluctant to return to the cabin she shared with Seraphine to fetch the garment.

  If they could have made the journey entirely by horseback, Seraphine would have been an intrepid traveler and an agreeable companion. Seraphine mewed up in a ship for so long was an entirely different creature, but Sir Patrick had been anxious to return to London as soon as possible. He had insisted that considering the state of the roads in England, traveling upriver was the swiftest route. Seraphine had reluctantly agreed, but she had been miserably ill from the moment they had weighed anchor.

  Meg had done her best to alleviate her friend’s suffering, but when Seraphine had commanded Meg to go and leave her to die in peace, Meg had been relieved to comply.

  She clung to the deck rail and lifted her face to the fresh breeze. She was no fonder of traveling by ship than Seraphine, but her unease stemmed less from any physical discomfort than the pressing weight of memories.

  For years Meg had harbored a secret dread of water, an anxiety
that she had finally conquered by doing her best to suppress her recollection of her mother’s drowning. But as she peered over the side of the ship into the brackish waters of the Thames, her thoughts eddied as well, dragging her back to the last day she seen her mother alive.

  Meg had thwarted Cassandra Lascelles’s scheme to release a poisonous miasma over the gardens of the Louvre, destroying the dowager French queen Catherine de Medici and anyone unfortunate enough to be near her.

  Her plot discovered, Cassandra had been forced to flee, dragging Meg along with her. Maman had been furious and Meg had trembled in fear of the punishment that she knew would come. Cassandra Lascelles was skilled in the art of inflicting pain, especially upon her own daughter.

  But Papa had arrived in time to snatch Meg away from her mother. When the palace guard had overtaken them, Cassandra had fled, stumbling into the river. The current had been so swift, the water soaking Maman’s gown, the weight of the fabric dragging her down. No one had been able to save her.

  But you should have tried, a voice inside her insisted.

  I was only a child. A small, frightened little girl, the rational part of Meg responded. Yet a trace of guilt always lingered. No matter what else she had been, Cassandra had been her mother. Even while Meg had dreaded the prospect that Cassandra might be found alive, a small part of her heart had hoped for it as well.

  That Cassandra would return, be the mother Meg had always wanted, hold her tenderly and tell her she loved her. The fantasy of a child, Meg reflected sadly. She knew full well, if Cassandra had survived, she would only have sought to involve Meg in more of her mad schemes.

  If Maman had indeed survived … The prospect sent a chill through Meg and she wrapped her arms about her-self.

  She heard the sound of a footfall behind her. Sir Patrick, she thought, an involuntary smile touching her lips. Without being obtrusive, he tended to keep a watchful eye out for her, seeing to her every comfort on the journey, just as he had promised.

  Meg turned from the rail to greet him, but her smile froze. She tensed to see Blackwood bearing down upon her, wearing his customary scowl, a woolen cloak slung over his arm.