Keeper of the King's Secrets (6 page)

The nobleman blocked the doorway and he gazed at her in open interest, taking in the smell of paint and the stains on her fingers as they clutched the satchel’s straps.

“Who are you?”

“Susanna Horenbout, my lord, the King’s painter.”

“Ah, yes.” He swung his gaze to the missive on the desk. “Are you making pretty the scurrilous writs of this bare-faced thief?”

Susanna’s mouth gaped. “No, sir. A missive from the King.”

Wolsey fixed his gaze on her, and she felt if he hadn’t been sure the nobleman would have come to her rescue, his hands would have been around her throat for mentioning even that.

“Well, that is at least something. What he sent out last week was hard enough to swallow, without gold leaf.”

“Go.” Wolsey’s eyes snapped at her, his voice harsh, and Susanna tried to inch past her rescuer.

He stepped forward, into the room, and Susanna saw his beefy fist close around Wolsey’s robe at the neck. “This so-called Amicable Grant is illegal, Wolsey, plain and simple.
If you’re trying to start civil unrest, you’re doing a good job—because no one can pay what you’re asking, sir. No one.”

She stepped out of the room and slowly swung the doors shut.

“My tenants in Suffolk are on the verge of revolt.” The nobleman’s voice rose to a shout, but when the thick doors closed, the sound became too muffled to make out clearly.

Susanna turned and stopped short.

The antechamber was empty.

War is not to be avoided, but is only to be put off to the advantage of others;

—Machiavelli
, The Prince,
chapter 3

S
usanna glanced behind her with a little spike of fear. She didn’t want Wolsey to know she was alone and unprotected. Had he seen the room was empty as she’d stepped out?

She switched her knife to her other hand and swiped a fear-slicked palm down her wool dress.

Where were Simon and Peter Jack? Even if they were in the eating hall, she was surprised they would
both
leave.

She would find them.

She stepped out of the antechamber, closing the door quietly behind her, and a hand tapped her shoulder from behind. She spun on her heel with a strangled shriek.

It was a man in the Cardinal’s livery. She put one hand to
her heart, half-raised the other, knife still clutched between stiff fingers, and stared at him, breathing fast.

“My pardon, mistress. Does His Grace require anything?” He either didn’t see her weapon in the gloom or chose to ignore it.

She shook her head.

“My thanks.” The man shuffled back to a chair set in a dark alcove of the passageway.

Able at last to draw a breath, Susanna wondered if he realized how close he’d come to having his throat cut. She readjusted her grip on her knife. “Did you see which way my companions went?”

“I’ve seen no one.”

Susanna could feel the Cardinal’s presence and wanted, needed, to flee. She turned in the direction she’d come, trying to remember the twists and turns Simon had taken to deliver her into the Cardinal’s lair.

With the King gone to stay in one of his country houses to hawk, Bridewell was eerily empty. Some of the passageways had not been lit, and Susanna walked with a hand against the wall, swinging out to avoid chairs and hall tables.

The smell of beeswax, lemon, and vinegar was strong. Evidence the servants had been hard at work while they had the chance to clean thoroughly.

At last, up ahead she saw lights, and realized she was all but running toward them. She forced herself to slow, to breathe deep, and stepped out into a main hall.

She recognized it, and recalled the way out into the courtyard.

There was no sign of Simon or Peter Jack, and she began to worry. They would never have left her alone willingly, even without the threat of Parker’s anger hanging over them.

A few servants looked in her direction. They were gathered around a small fireplace at the far end of the hall and although it made sense to approach them, Susanna suddenly felt very foreign, very out of place.

She was exposed, too. If the Cardinal came looking for her he would see her, no matter which passageway he used. She moved closer to the door to the backyard and tucked herself behind a heavy support beam.

After some minutes had passed, she peered around. The Cardinal’s man had joined the servants at the fire, and one suddenly pointed in her direction.

Heart thumping, Susanna looked at the door that led to the stables. Wolsey’s man began walking toward her, and she considered her chances of finding help here against the man who ruled England for the King.

She ran for the door.

A
bitter March wind had started up and Susanna pulled her cloak about herself as she headed for the stables, hurrying within before Wolsey’s man could see her direction. She shuddered with relief as she stepped into the warm, ripe air of the barn, and her cheeks burned with the change in temperature.

“Aye?” The groomsman who stepped forward eyed her suspiciously.

“I’m looking for Simon Carter.” She was fascinated by his face, by the deep wrinkles at his eyes, the dimple in his cheek.

The man relaxed. “You’d be Parker’s lady, eh?”

She nodded. “I can’t find Simon to take me home.”

The man scratched his head. “I haven’t seen him. His cart’s still here.” He pointed and Susanna recognized Simon’s cart, and his two horses feeding quietly beside it.

Simon might have been called to other duties, but Peter Jack’s disappearance was inexplicable. She turned back to the door out to the yard, torn between worry for him and fear of the Cardinal. Rain began drumming on the stable roof.

“Why aren’t you waiting inside—begging your pardon at the question—mistress?”

Susanna turned to the groomsman, unsure whether to answer truthfully. Wolsey was not the master of Bridewell, but all knew he acted for the King. “I’m afraid of someone within.” It was the most truthful thing she could say.

“Someone behaving ill?” The man rubbed his cheek. “Does he know you’re Parker’s lady, and all?”

Susanna lifted her shoulders.

He pursed his lips. “Most likely not. You can stay here, then. Simon won’t go anywhere without his cart and his animals.” He gave a small bow. “Name’s Alfred, mistress.”

Susanna curtsied back. “I am Susanna Horenbout.”

After the intricate, delicate work of the illumination, she felt like a bolder, larger challenge. And she loved the good humor on his face. “Would you let me sketch your portrait?”

And although they were great and wonderful men, yet they were men, and each one of them had no more opportunity than the present offers, for their enterprises were neither more just nor easier than this, nor was God more their friend than He is yours.

—Machiavelli
, The Prince,
chapter 26

P
arker’s frustration and anger were like a sack of rocks, bumping and bruising him with each step. He’d lost the assassin south of the river—a thick fog and increased foot traffic conspiring to rob him of a chance to run his quarry to ground.

Unless he’d been deliberately led on and dropped. Parker didn’t want to contemplate that possibility. It would mean he’d wasted the whole afternoon and had no starting point at which to try to pick up his man again.

He walked into his courtyard and frowned. The only light in the house came from the kitchen.

There was no sound from the barn, but Parker stuck his head around the door anyway. The horses looked up curiously from their feed, and then went back to their supper.

Parker closed the door, and as he stepped out from the eaves the rain came, suddenly, in a soft hiss of sound.

The thought of Susanna waiting within, in the warmth, made him run through the puddles to the back door with a lighter step.

He stepped in and the wind wrenched the door from his hand and slammed it against the wall.

As he struggled to close it, he registered Mistress Greene and Eric, their eyes wide with the shock of the slamming door and the suddenness of his entrance.

They were sitting beside the fire, in a way that reminded him of a vigil. Mistress Greene stood and suddenly an icy knife twisted in his gut.

“Susanna?”

“Not here.” Mistress Greene wound the corner of her apron around her hand. “The King ordered her to Bridewell Palace.”

“The King?” Parker frowned.

“Aye, to paint some important document for him. Simon came to fetch her.”

Parker relaxed a little. “Peter Jack went, too?”

They nodded in unison.

Parker turned back to the door, hand extended to open it again. It swung inward of its own accord.

Peter Jack stood dripping outside. His eyes lifted and the look in them shot a bolt of pure terror into Parker’s heart.

There was a gray-green tinge to Peter Jack’s skin, and he had clearly stumbled and fallen a number of times on his way home.
“I ate something …” He pushed a muddy hand through his hair. “I’ve been sick all afternoon, and when I got to the Cardinal’s rooms she wasn’t there. Simon had already told me we’d have to find our own way home, so I know she hasn’t gone with him.”

Parker stepped back so Peter Jack could come into the warm kitchen, but he would not move.

“I’ve lost her, sir. She’s gone.”

P
arker came for her, striding out of the darkness like Hades in search of his bride.

Susanna watched him, fascinated, from her perch on a hay bale. She’d just finished a detailed charcoal of Simon’s horses, but here was something infinitely more interesting to draw.

He’d pushed the stable doors open, striking them with open palms, and stopped short at the sight of her, his mouth grim and his eyes filled with the curious blankness they assumed when he was prepared to do infinite harm, commit any violence.

Her heart almost stopped beating at the power and danger of him, and at the way his face softened in the three steps it took him to reach her and draw her into his arms.

He did not speak, and neither did she. The only sound was the drip of water as it fell in a steady stream from Parker’s cloak onto the stone floor of the stable.