for me when I was a child. I was told she was dead.”
Silence ensued. Barnaby shut the door, planted himself in front of it.
I couldn’t take my eyes from her, couldn’t reconcile this brittle, ancient figure with the quick-witted woman enshrined in my memory. She’d always been spry, fleet of word and gesture; her eyes had been discerning, bright and keen, not these sunken hollow orbs.
She had left on a trip to Stratford, as she did every year. A few days to come and go, she’d said. Don’t fret, my pet. I’ll be back before you know it. But she didn’t come back. Thieves had beset her on the road: That’s what Master Shelton told me. I didn’t weep, didn’t ask to see her body or where she was buried. The pain was too intense. It hadn’t mattered. All that mattered was that she was gone. She was gone and she would never return to me. That’s what I’d been told. That’s what I believed. I was twelve years old and bereft of the one person in the world who had loved me. Her loss became an incurable wound that I hid deep within.
Now the question boiled inside me, with the force of an eruption.
Why? Why did you leave me?
But as I took in her appearance, I knew.
The scars on her ankles—I’d seen the same on mules condemned by unfeeling masters to a lifetime of hobbling about manacled, forced to turn the churning wheels of mills. I let my hand trail to her jaw, as I might soothe a frightened mare. Like a mare she understood. She opened her lips. Her mouth was dark inside. Defiled.
They had cut out her tongue.
A scream curdled in my throat. I choked it back as I heard Elizabeth utter, “Is this the woman who has been poisoning my brother?”
From the bed Sidney replied, “Yes. Lady Dudley brought her here … She gave her instructions, to make the treatments. But … she … she…”
“What?” Elizabeth snapped. “Spit it out!”
“Mistress Alice is a master herbalist,” I said. “She cured me of many illnesses in my childhood. She would never have done this willingly.”
Elizabeth pointed at her brother. “You can say that after what she’s done?”
Mistress Alice’s misshapen hand tugged at my jerkin. I looked into her eyes. The lump in my chest turned molten. Barnaby acknowledged my warning glance as I turned to where Elizabeth stood. “She’d never do this to any living being, much less to a man—not unless she was forced to,” I said. “She has been hurt, tortured. The duke ordered this done.”
“Why?” Elizabeth’s voice caught. “Dear God in heaven, why do this to him?”
“To keep him alive. To gain time,” was my grim reply.
Elizabeth stared at me. “I can’t leave him here. We must get him out of that bed.”
“We can’t,” I said, and she took one look at my face and stiffened. “We must go. Now.”
She glanced at Barnaby. “I don’t hear anything,” she said.
I answered, “Neither do I. But Mistress Alice does. Look at her.”
Elizabeth did. Mistress Alice had shuffled to the secret door and was motioning to us with unmistakable agitation. Her hands were unbearably twisted, those of a hundred-year-old crone. What they had done to her had stolen years from her life. She was not yet fifty.
I had to fight back my rage, and returned to Elizabeth. She met my stare defiantly and then turned away and made for the door without a backward glance.
Barnaby followed. Sidney bolted to a coffer, flung open the lid. He yanked out a jewel-hilted sword sheathed in leather and tossed it to me. “Edward has no need of it anymore. It’s of Toledo steel, a gift from the imperial ambassador. I’ll try and delay them while you get away.”
I knew instantly from the feel that it had been fashioned for someone light of build, like me. Only I could never have afforded such a sword on my own.
Mistress Alice shuffled purposefully to the bed. “See that Her Grace gets out safely,” I ordered Barnaby, and I kicked the secret door shut in his face. Sidney was at the main door. He froze, gaping at me. “Where are you going? They’re almost here!”
I moved to where Mistress Alice stood at the bedside table, rummaging through a wooden chest—her medicine chest, which she’d stashed on the kitchen shelf, out of my reach. I felt a cold shock as I realized I’d never even noticed it was missing, though she never took it with her