Taste of Treason Read online

  Taste of Treason

  By April Taylor

  Book two of The Tudor Enigma

  Blood, frogs and a deadly threat to the firstborn...

  Luke Ballard, Dominus Elemancer and Privy Inquirer into Divers Mischiefs and Grievances, has grown his magical powers since his last encounter with the Sunderers, dark sorcerers who will stop at nothing—including partnering with England’s mortal enemies—to destroy the throne. But is he skilled enough to protect his own and prevent tragedy from reaching the royal family?

  The continuation of Tudor rule and the future of England’s true religion rest with King Henry IX’s new bride, Queen Madeline of Scotland. Pregnant with a possible heir, she’s nearly killed—twice—in incidents that bizarrely mimic the Plagues of Egypt. And she is not alone. All of Hampton Court, it seems, has been surrounded by a dark cloud of otherworldly danger.

  Fearful for his wife and unborn child, King Henry can only turn to one man.

  101,500 words

  Dear Reader,

  Happy October! I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I love October. Not only is it the month in which my daughter was born (ten years ago!!) but I love the weather, the scents and the activities of October. Everything about the month combines to something fun and transporting for me. Of course, I’m sure not everyone feels the same about this fall month, but I’m happy to say we have a great collection of fiction releases to help aid all of you with fun escapes.

  In the spirit of the somewhat paranormal mood of the month, I’ll start with paranormal and fantasy genres. R.L. Naquin returns with an installment in her quirky, fun, romantic urban fantasy Monster Haven series. With Aegises dying all over the world, the only safe place for Zoey is the protection of home—but hiding doesn’t come naturally for Zoey, and she’ll have to act fast to prevent a zombie apocalypse in Demons in My Driveway. And in Dana Marie Bell’s paranormal romance Of Shadows and Ash, when evil attacks from the shadows, dryad Ashton Ward will be the only one who can save his beloved witchdoctor from eternal darkness.

  Matt Sheehan brings back the ever-lovable Helmut and his sidekick in urban fantasy Helmut Goes Abroad. Another round of magic, fistfights and one-liners with the best, most handsome, and of course humble detective Helmut Haase and his apothetic sidekick Shamus O’Sheagan.

  Futurisic romance In the Void by Sheryl Nantus gives us romance set in space—and a brothel spaceship. Answering a distress call can spell the end of the Bonnie Belle and everyone aboard...

  A dragonshifter intent on executing a high-stakes art heist is forced to juggle a wedding, a family and a pesky attraction to her target’s head of security in paranormal romance ’Til Dragons Do Us Part by Lorenda Christensen. April Taylor’s alternate history fantasy Taste of Treason, the second in her Tudor Enigma series, also releases this month. Master Elemancer Luke Ballard has grown his magical powers since his last encounter with the dark sorcerers who will stop at nothing to destroy the English throne. But is he skilled enough to both protect his own and prevent tragedy from reaching the royal family?

  Moving on to contemporary romance releases in October, the last man that handywoman Georgia Lennox expects to break through her tough-as-nails, ugly-duckling exterior is John Montgomery the Third, the millionaire philanthropist she’s worked for in Because I Can by Tamara Morgan.

  In military contemporary romance His Road Home by Anna Richland, a false engagement story gives injured Special Forces Sergeant Rey Cruz a surprise gift: love. Pitch Imperfect by Elise Alden is a contemporary romance in which the last thing celebrity singer Anjuli Carver wanted was to be dependent on her ex-fiancé to restore her dilapidated manor. Will he rebuild her crumbling walls or demolish her defenses with his sexy pursuit?

  Male/male romance Stand By You by A.M. Arthur is the story of a broken soul who finds solace and safety in the company of a gentle janitor—as well as an unexpected chance at real love.

  Last this month, we’re pleased to welcome co-authors Eileen Griffin and Nikka Michaels with In the Raw, part one of a male/male romance duology about culinary students Ethan Martin and James Lassiter. When they find themselves competing for the same scholarship they also discover they’re competing for something more important—love. Look for part two, In the Fire, next month, in November 2014.

  Coming in November 2014: Carina Press and I both celebrate an anniversary. And we have books from a number of powerhouse authors including Josh Lanyon, Shannon Stacey, Lauren Dane and so many more!

  Here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  Dedication

  To Dad

  Sorry I couldn’t use the leather gun idea. Perhaps one day...

  Acknowledgments

  The making of a book is so much more than an author pounding away on the keyboard. The initial result is like newly mixed bread dough, pale but not yet fulfilling its promise. To get to the finished loaf, you need a great cook. Thanks to my great cook, editor Kerri Buckley at Carina Press. And I must mention Kingo Ng, Assistant Product Manager, and his team, who design The Tudor Enigma’s incredible book covers.

  Thanks go to Marlene Stringer of the Stringer Literary Agency, who loved Luke at first reading and has championed him ever since.

  I couldn’t do this without Nicky Griffiths, my beta reader; the ever enthusiastic members of Hornsea Writers; the warders at Hampton Court Palace; Alison Weir and Alison Sim for their amazing books on the Tudor period and Claire Ridgway of the Anne Boleyn Files (http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com).

  The support of my family and my friends is paramount as is the company of a certain blind golden retriever who comes and sits on my feet when he thinks a walk is due.

  And finally, thank you to all the composers whose music keeps me company in this solitary profession.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  They arrived unannounced, appearing through the mist of early morning. Luke, on the far side of the river, stopped gathering hyssop and rue to watch the royal barge ship its oars.

  He stiffened when he saw Queen Anne Boleyn pause for a moment, her head twisting in his direction as if she sensed his presence. Even from this distance, he recognized the tension in her posture and could not prevent a flicker of apprehension from curling across his shoulders and down his spine. The Queen Mother seldom ventured beyond t
he confines of Hampton Court Palace, so Luke knew her visit to London must have been vital. He glanced down into Joss’s golden eyes and stroked her silky fur.

  “Here comes more trouble, girl, as if we didn’t have enough. We’d better get home and prepare.”

  Given the reports coming out of London, the arrival of the royal family should not have been a surprise. The sweating sickness was back, its rampaging hand snuffing life out of peasant and noble with equal delight, the main reason for the depleted state of Luke’s supply of hyssop. The sickness had not only caused consternation among the people but had provided the enemies of the Tudor dynasty with fodder for their theories and conspiracies. They assiduously spread the information that it was a disease unknown in England until Henry VII took the throne from Plantagenet Richard. No remedy potent enough to render it harmless could be formulated, and Luke often wondered if his few successes were down to luck and nothing to do with his medicinal skills.

  In ministering to the people in local villages, Luke had noticed that the first sign those stricken suffered was a feeling of dread. He had been assiduous in sending out the message that anyone experiencing this sensation must immediately take to their beds and send for him or one of his colleagues. Of those who heeded this advice, more than half survived. Of those who did not, almost two-thirds died. If the illness progressed to cold shivers, followed by hot shivers, death was almost certain.

  People died in the streets where they dropped. Some suffered agonies for almost two days, the lucky ones for less than twelve hours until that final mercy of unconsciousness and death. Thus far, the Outer Green where Luke had his apothecary shop had lost only one of the workers in the Scalding House. In the cramped living conditions of the surrounding settlements, the toll had been much higher.

  Henry IX and his new Queen, Madeleine of Scotland, had been holding court at Whitehall for the past three months, the King hosting delegations from various European courts. Many had come great distances to convey good wishes on his nuptials and stayed on to celebrate the news of the queen’s pregnancy.

  Henry was known to enjoy merriment and jousting but there had been whispers at Hampton Court that he risked his health and that of his Queen and unborn child to stay so close to where the epidemic raged unchecked. Mayhap that had been the purpose of the Queen Mother’s visit. To remind her son that nothing was more important than Madeleine’s health and the safe delivery of his son and heir. Approaching her fifth month of pregnancy, Madeleine had become fretful, according to rumors that reached Luke via Twelvetrees, the garrulous baker who delivered to the palace kitchens.

  Thus the sight of the royal barge was no shock to Luke. Nor was the fact that the Queen Mother had been persuasive enough to cause Henry and Madeleine to accompany her. Doubtless the rest of the royal household would descend on the palace in the next few days. No, the arrival of the royal family was not a surprise. The tautness of Anne’s bearing was. He caught sight of Gwenette Paige, attendant and confidante of the Queen Mother. She, too, appeared preoccupied and did not even glance at him. Something deadly must be afoot. Something, he would hazard, that needed his elemancy skills.

  Few knew that Luke, outwardly the self-effacing Outer Green apothecary, was an elemancer; a magician who, helped by his greyspring dog, harnessed the elements to create magic for the good of all. Anne Boleyn did, for she, too, was an elemancer, although as a woman—albeit a queen—she was regarded as inferior. It had been at her insistence a year previously that Luke had investigated a plot to kill the King, instigated by evil sunderers, the sworn enemies of elemancers. He had succeeded, but only just, and in the process a young acolyte elemancer had died, something for which he still castigated himself.

  That experience and a desire for revenge had fueled his determination to move beyond the level of journeyman elemancer, and by dint of hard work and persistence, Luke had attained the level of Dominus. The King, who, had he known of Luke’s talents would have had him executed for witchcraft, instead conferred upon the unwilling apothecary the title of Privy Inquirer into Divers Mischiefs and Grievances. His was to be a secret role, known to very few. He would work only on those matters that touched the royal family and the safety of the realm, and he would work in obscurity. Luke had no problems with the concept of obscurity. He craved it as did all elemancers, sensible of the risks they ran practicing magic, albeit white magic. The role of elemancers was to remain inconspicuous whilst working for cosmic balance.

  Luke attempted to tune into the Queen Mother’s thoughts, but an imperious shake of her head made him instantly withdraw. Not, though, before he had sensed disquiet and trepidation beneath her rigid stance. It appeared probable his talents might once more be required. If so, the enemy had returned. Sunderers, those of the malus nocte, the elemancers’ bitterest foe. And just as elemancers were openly attended by their greysprings, sunderers kept foul creatures to aid their dark magic. Umbrans could assume any shape their masters desired. Sunderers desired nothing more than the pursuit of power through strife and division. That their existence was virtually unknown was a tribute to the diligence with which elemancers guarded the populace. Elemancers only sought to maintain the balance of the universe by thwarting their foes, defeating but not destroying them. As Luke’s studies had taught him, any sunderer who failed was dealt with by his own kind. His mind ranged over the possibilities of what peril could be about to wing its way towards him.

  Chapter Two

  “Praise the Lord you are back. They are here, Master Ballard.”

  As he opened the door into the kitchen of his apothecary shop and house in the Outer Green of Hampton Court Palace, Rob rushed to take the basket of medicinal plants from him.

  Luke closed his eyes. The summons had come already. He looked towards the door that led into the shop.

  “Her Grace is here?”

  Rob frowned.

  “No. Your first customers. I can’t serve them.”

  Relief had Luke leaning against the doorjamb, laughing. “Never fear, lad. You get some food on the table. I will be back soon.”

  When he encountered the men in his shop, Luke ceased to wonder why Rob had been so unwilling to attend them. Overbearing and arrogant, staring down their long noses at him, they demanded he visit their master who had taken an ill-advised dish of oysters. Luke knew the glutton of old. He maintained a smiling façade and simply handed them a large phial of stomach potion along with unnecessarily complicated instructions and charged them three times the going rate before seeing them on their way. At least he would recoup some of the past weeks’ losses, when he had treated the poor for free.

  Feeling the beginning of fatigue, a regular occurrence since the onset of the sickness, Luke made a large flagon of his restorative. Although the palace itself and the villages on the north side of the Thames remained free of the sweating disease, he had spent the last six weeks in a largely fruitless attempt to fight its ravages on the south bank. His few successes, far outweighed by failures, had left him physically and spiritually drained. If his surmise were correct and the court had brought him another tangled web to unravel, he would need as much help as he could muster.

  He drank a full goblet and felt the buzz of vitality surge through his veins. The gold-flecked liquid had not just kept Luke free from the sweats, but those closest to him. Corbin Quayne, head of the guild of apothecaries had not gone out to tend the sick, mainly because his customers were from the higher classes and, like the merchant, sent servants for medicines. Even so, Luke had made sure that Corbin and his adult children, Will and Bertila, dear to Luke as any brother or sister, were safeguarded. The two other people whose health he had secured were Rob Panton, Luke’s kinsman and servant, and Byram Creswell, Captain of the King’s Personal Bodyguard at Hampton Court. All were under the continual protection of Luke’s magic.

  Much to his surprise, no summons came from the palace that night or the next morning. He breathed a sigh of relief that his assumptions had been wrong and spent the morning
out and about among the poor and sick, returning to the apothecary shop when his hunger was such that he could no longer think of anything but food.

  After eating, Luke made up the remedies from his morning’s harvest. The familiarity of the formulae gave his mind freedom to ponder on the Queen Mother’s demeanor the previous day. His misgivings returned in full. He felt certain he was about to be thrust once more on a life-threatening mission. The task she had inflicted on him the previous summer, culminating in a battle with a kaygin sunderer called Asmodeus, had taxed him to the limit. Hopefully, if, as he feared, he was about to be tested again, he prayed that as a Dominus he would have skills enough to conquer the enemy.

  The sickness forced people to stay in their homes in an attempt to avoid it but for once, Luke was not unhappy at his lack of customers. He sat by the fire with his greyspring, Joss, draped against his leg. When she turned her nose away from some tough strips of beef Luke held under it, she confirmed his opinion that Rob’s culinary abilities had not improved. Greysprings were known for their delicacy in all matters, especially food. A mix of greyhound and springing spaniel, only greysprings had the sensitivity to be elemancers’ guardians when trances enveloped them and, as Luke knew only too well, trances descended at the most inopportune moments. Joss had been his helpmeet since the day of his induction as an elemancer. She would be with him until he died, whereupon she, too, would go back to dust.

  In the soporific heat from the fire, Luke drifted into a light doze. He was briefly aware of Joss standing up, her nose nuzzling his hand before he found himself stumbling along a path covered by a thick mist. However, it could not mask the evil swirling round his ears, intent on smothering him. In an instant, he had cloaked himself in a barrier not even this penetrating miasma could permeate. At the far end of audibility, he heard scornful laughter.

  “Do not think you can best us,” a disembodied voice said in his ear.

  “Asmodeus?”

  Luke was instantly at full vigilance, only now aware of how much he had craved meeting this enemy again. Cackling mirth exploded around him. Here was not just one entity: he was surrounded.