In Defense of the Queen (2 page)

A thought occurred to Parker. “Do you think he will act as your father’s proxy while he’s here?”

She lifted her head, and laughter still danced in her eyes. “He will notice if I do not sleep in my own room, if that is your meaning.”

Parker swore, moved her even deeper into the shadows of the room to kiss her.

He felt a tug against his sleeve and he jerked up his head. In time to see a bolt slam into the door opposite the window with a thud.

* * *

Parker leapt straight through the window into the garden.

Susanna watched him fly over the sill, then threw herself against the wall. She looked across the room at the bolt, and the cider they had just drunk with Lucas rose in her throat.

If anyone knew to the second how long it would take Jean to crank in a second bolt, it was Parker, and she understood he’d gone on the attack before they could be pinned down. But it made it no easier to accept.

She moved until she was directly beside the window, then froze at the sound of footsteps in the hall. The door swung open.

Lucas stood in the doorway, and her heart leapt in her chest.

“Down. For pity’s sake, get down.” She crouched as she spoke, showing him, so he would do it quicker.

“What are you about, Susanna?” He frowned, the look on his face so like Father’s when he thought her behaviour unbecoming. He stepped into the room.

“Get down. Someone is shooting bolts at us.”

He looked at her, his eyes wide, and at last, he crouched. Scuttled to join her at the wall.

She could see his hands were shaking.

“Where is Parker?”

“Gone after them.” She could not help but compare her lover, leaping after the attacker like a wolf on the hunt, with her brother, cowering with her against the wall.

It made her stand up, and lean across for a quick look into the garden. Dusk had turned to evening, and it was impossible to see anything.

“Who . . . who would shoot at you?”

The false notes in his question were like poor colour mixes on a painting, like an obvious patch-up on a torn inlay of gold leaf. She had thought it was Jean, of course Parker and her both had, but what if it wasn’t?

“I don’t know.” She kept her voice steady. “It comes very close on the heels of your arrival.”

He made a sound, a croak from the back of his throat.

Her temper spiked. “If someone you have brought to our door has harmed Parker . . .” She peered out of the window again, listening. But there was nothing to hear. “Why are you really here? And don’t say it is to set up house.”

He hesitated, and she thought he was weighing up telling her at all. He looked at the bolt sticking into the door for a long moment, before he drew in a deep breath, his face set. “I couldn’t say with your betrothed beside you. He is the King’s man, and what I need to give you is not for the King.”

“What you need to give me?” She lowered her voice, and saw he was plucking at something inside his jacket.

“Margaret of Austria bade Father give you this to pass to Queen Katherine. It seems the word is the English queen is pleased with you, and so Margaret decided you would be the perfect way to get something to her.”

“Get
what
to her?” She waited for him to show her what he had in his jacket, but his hand stayed were it was, as if simply resting over his heart. Like he was swearing fealty.

“A secret letter. The English queen’s correspondence is checked, these days, according to Margaret’s spies, and all suspicious correspondence is passed to the King or his cardinal.”

“Margaret wants me to smuggle a letter past the King and Wolsey to the Queen. And Father agreed to that?” She was breathless.

“Father works for Margaret.” He shrugged, as if this explained everything. “But no. They don’t mean for you to smuggle in the letter. There is too much risk with that. They would have you read it, and pass the message on. Whisper it in the Queen’s ear.”

“Father isn’t going to be working for Margaret much longer, he’s coming to work in London in a few months. And
I
work for the King. If I follow Father’s rule, I owe my loyalty to him.”

“You’re still your father’s daughter, Susanna. You obey him above all others.” Lucas took out the letter at last, and lifted it up for her to take.

She didn’t touch it. She wanted to climb out of the window, and see if Parker was all right. Her hand trembled as she set it on the sill, wondering if she should leap into the garden as Parker had. “I’m soon to be the wife of a courtier of the Privy Chamber. A man who is the Keeper of Westminster Palace and the King’s private purse. He’s also the King’s Yeoman of the Robes. And Father would have me commit treason, despite this?”

“Who will ever know?” Lucas’s face was in complete shadow in the now-dark room. “Visit the Queen, give her the message, and there is no way to say how she came to know.”

“Except the Queen herself, Margaret, Father, you, me,” she lifted a finger with each name, and then waved her free hand, “and whoever else at Margaret’s court is involved.” Susanna dropped her voice so low, it was barely a whisper. “And if the person firing bolts through the window is to do with this, someone else knows, too.”

Lucas turned the letter over and over in his hands. “I don’t know how anyone here could know of this.” He looked up at her, what little light there was glinting off his eyes. “I am no good at this skulduggery. But I warn you, whether we’re discovered in this or not, if you don’t take the message to Katherine, Margaret has told Father she will not pay him for his work this last year. She will ruin him.”

“If we are discovered,” she spoke slow and clear, so he could not mistake her meaning, “no matter if Father is ruined or not, we are dead.”

Chapter Three

for the springs both of good and evil flow from the prince over a whole nation, as from a lasting fountain

Utopia by Thomas More (translated by H. Morley)

T
he bowman was cool. He did not so much as flinch as Parker launched himself across the garden to the back wall where the shadowed figure perched, like a crow.

It must be Jean. He was one of the few Parker had ever encountered who had the steady, nerveless hands of a professional assassin.

“Jean.” He shouted the name as the bowman executed a smooth, graceful leap off the wall to the small alley below.

Parker jumped at the wall and scrabbled for hand and foot holds, reaching the top with bleeding fingers and scraped knees. He found his balance and looked down the alley.

The shooter was cranking his crossbow at the corner where the alley met St. Michael’s Lane.

Parker swore. If that was Jean, he would be dead before he took more than a step towards him. Even if it wasn’t the Frenchman, he would be a hard target to miss in the narrow back alley.

The bowman waited a beat, saw Parker had thought better of pursuit and lifted a hand in salute. He turned into Saint Michael’s Lane and disappeared.

Parker stayed where he was, crouched atop the wall, letting the night sounds settle back, letting the blood roaring in his ears abate.

If that was Jean, it was the first salvo in what he knew would be a battle to the death. But the way the man stood, held himself, didn’t stir any memories . . .

He couldn’t be sure.

If it wasn’t Jean, then perhaps Susanna was right.

Her brother had brought more than too much luggage with him from Ghent.

He’d brought trouble.

* * *

Susanna ignored the letter, lying where her brother had left it, duty discharged, on the floor by the window.

He’d gone back to his room, salvaging his pride by walking to the door, instead of crawling to it. She didn’t stop him.

Every step he took away from her twisted her feelings of loyalty to her family until they were a knotted, tangled skein in her stomach. She felt the weight of it as he turned into the passageway and left her alone in the room.

She flicked tears from under her eyes, took a deep breath and swung her legs over the sill. She dropped the short distance into the garden and moved forward.

Stopped.

There was a figure up on the wall, as dark and frightening as a gargoyle hanging from a church roof.

She stood very still as she tried to make it out.

“Parker?”

The figure moved, turning towards her, and leapt down. She could see it was Parker in the lines of his body, in the grace of his movement, and relaxed.

“Was it Jean?” She waited for him to join her, and when he stopped before her, she could not see his face.

“I don’t know.” He looked over his shoulder, back to the wall. “He was cool enough to be Jean. Accurate enough.”

“I hope it was him.”

He started, lifted his hand to touch her face. “Why do you say that?”

She took his wrist, tried to study his hand in the light coming from the study. It was bloody and moss-stained. “Lucas came in after you went out the window.”

She felt his fingers tense against hers, felt the steel in them. “And?”

She drew him towards the window, a finger on her lips, and when they were back in the study, she drew the shutters closed.

Parker stood motionless as she stoked the fire and lit a lantern, watching her every move.

She raised her gaze to his and took a deep breath. “My father has been bullied by Margaret of Austria into getting a secret message to Queen Katherine. He plans for me to pass it to her.”

Parker’s mouth opened, and then he clamped it shut with a snap. “What is the message?”

She looked at the letter, lying almost at his feet, and he followed her gaze, scooped it up.

“In here?” He reached for his letter knife, and was already breaking the seal as she nodded.

She sat, watching as he unrolled it.

He was silent as he read, and then frowned down at the parchment.

“What is it?”

“Were you to pass this to the Queen?” He looked up, and she understood why so many stood down to Parker without him having to do more than look their way. She shivered.

“I was to read it, and pass the message on. Not give her the letter itself. Or so Lucas says.”

Parker held the letter out to her, and she was still reluctant to take it. She crossed her arms. “What does it say?”

Parker flicked it with his fingers. “You’ll have to tell me. It’s written in code.” His expression, when he raised his head again, was unreadable.

“Code?” The notion was so ridiculous, she finally took the letter, smoothed it out on her lap.

It was in her father’s hand, no doubt about that. But the words themselves . . . she gasped.

“This isn’t in code.” She scanned the page, tightly packed with the unusual markings, and leant back in her chair, truly shocked.

“You understand it?” Parker stepped closer, crouched down beside her chair.

“It is in the shorthand we use in the
atelier
. It’s not only in Flemish, but in a shortened form we’ve used for years to save paper and time. This letter could not have come from anyone but my father. He has compromised himself, using this.”

“And what does it say?” His eyes were on her face, and she raised a hand to rub her temple.

“Margaret sends Katherine a warning. That the Emperor Charles is planning to break his betrothal to her daughter, Princess Mary, and marry Queen Katherine’s niece, Isabella of Portugal, instead.” She traced the words with a finger. “Why would Margaret want to warn Katherine secretly, though? Why not tell Henry as well?”

“Because treachery by the Queen’s relatives caused the Queen to lose the King’s favour before—favour she has never truly won back. And Charles breaking his betrothal vows to Henry’s daughter, that is a betrayal.”

“The Queen would suffer for it, even though she has nothing to do with it?”

“She had nothing to do with her family’s treachery last time, either.” Parker took the letter back, stared down. “Margaret of Austria has always been an ally of England, and an enemy of France. She knows Henry will be furious if Charles reneges on his betrothal promise to Princess Mary, and he’ll possibly break the alliance between them she’s tried so hard to build.”

“But why would she give the Queen advanced warning in secret?” Susanna leant over the page, and read the message again.

“Knowledge is power. Margaret wants to prepare Katherine. And perhaps buy some time, try to change Charles’s mind. Both Mary and Katherine will be far less useful to Henry if Mary is no longer to be the Emperor’s wife.”

“But surely the King loves his daughter?” Susanna spoke without thinking. Then remembered what her own father was asking her to do, asking her to risk. Just to please his employer.

A cold, sick feeling lodged itself in her chest. Her father was most likely acting from desperation. But Henry, she had looked into his eyes before and seen the utter ruthlessness there. He would do whatever he thought in his best interests.