the lower half of the walls, and the lone small window was glazed with greenish glass. A lit candle stub floated in oil in a dish on the table. Across the floor were strewn matted rushes, soiled articles of clothing, and assorted utensils and dishes. The smell was nauseating, a mixture of rancid leftover food and dirty garments.
I dropped my saddlebag on the threshold. Evidently, some things never changed. Rooms at court or not, the Dudley boys still lived like hogs in a sty.
I heard snores coming from the bed. I edged to it, my heels crunching on slivers of meat-bones embedded in the rushes. I avoided a pool of vomit by the bedside as I grabbed hold of the tester curtain and tugged it aside. The rungs rattled. I leapt back, half expecting the entire howling Dudley clan to lunge out at me, brandishing fists as they used to do in my childhood.
Instead, I saw a lone figure sprawled on the bed, clad in wrinkled hose and shirt, his tangled hair the color of dirty wheat. He exuded the unmistakable stench of cheap beer: Guilford, the fair babe of the tribe, all of seventeen years old and in a drunken stupor.
I pinched the hand dangling over the bedside. When all I roused was another guttural snore, I grabbed his shoulder and shook it.
He swung out his arms, rearing a sheet-lined face. “Pox on you,” he slurred.
“Good eve to you as well, my Lord Guilford,” I replied. I took a prudent step back, just in case. Though he was the youngest of the five Dudley sons, against whom I’d won more battles than lost, I was not about to risk a thrashing my first hour at court.
He gaped at me, his saturated brain trying to match identity to face. When he did, Guilford scoffed. “Why, it’s the bastard orphan. What are you—” He choked, doubled over to spew on the floor. Groaning, he fell back across the bed. “I hate her. I’ll make her pay for this. I swear I will, that righteous bitch.”
“Did she spike your ale?” I asked innocently.
He glared, forced himself up to clamber out of bed. He had the Dudley height, and I knew that if he hadn’t consumed his weight in ale he’d have pounced on me like a cub with a boil. Instinctively, I slid my hand to the sheathed dagger. Not that I could dare brandish it. A commoner could be put to death for so much as verbally threatening a noble. Still, the feel of its worn hilt against my fingers was reassuring.
“Yes, she spiked my ale.” Guilford swayed. “Just because she’s kin to the king, she thinks she can snub her nose at me. I’ll show her who’s master here. As soon as we’re wed, I’ll thrash her till she bleeds, the miserable—”
A voice lashed across the room. “Shut your miserable trap, Guilford.”
Guilford blanched. I turned about.
Standing in the doorway was none other than my new master, Robert Dudley.
In spite of my apprehension at our reunion after ten years, he was a sight to behold. I had always secretly envied him. While mine was an unremarkable face, so commonplace it was as easily forgotten as rain, Robert was a superlative specimen of breeding at its best; impressive in stature, broad of chest and muscular of shank like his father, with his mother’s chiseled nose, thick black hair, and long-lashed, dusky eyes that had certainly made more than a few maidens melt at his feet. He possessed everything I did not, including years of service at court and, upon King Edward’s ascension, prestigious appointments leading up to a distinguished, if brief, campaign against the Scots, and the wedding and bedding, or vice versa, of a damsel of means.
Yes, Lord Robert Dudley had everything a man like me could want. And he was everything a man like me should fear.
He kicked the door shut with his booted foot. “Look at you, drunk as a priest. You disgust me. You have piss for blood in your veins.”
“I was”—Guilford had turned white as canvas—“I was only saying…”
“Don’t.” Robert spoke as if he hadn’t seen me standing there. He swerved, his eyes narrowed. “I see the stable whelp has made it here intact.”
I bowed. Our association, it seemed, was to take up where we’d left off, unless I could prove I had more to offer him than a hapless body he could pummel.
“I have, my lord,” I replied in my finest diction. “I am honored to