Taste of Treason Read online

  “The demon of wrath?” The voice was at once mocking and gleeful.

  Luke felt his senses being battered by arrows of malice. At the same time his body experienced painful pummeling from invisible fists.

  “You are not Asmodeus?”

  “Do not confuse that pathetic trifler with us. He thought he could rule. He knows better now. We are all powerful.”

  “We?”

  “We are one and we are many.”

  “And all powerful.”

  Despite his pain, Luke could not prevent his tone betraying mockery and amusement. The laughter ceased on the instant.

  “Heed this warning. Do not fight us,” the voice hissed into the silence. “Or you will feel our strength.”

  The sheer malevolence of the response hurled Luke from his trance, depositing him, panting and sweating, on the kitchen floor like an unseated horseman in the joust. Never before had his essence suffered such a paralyzing shock.

  Joss stood over him, growling softly in the back of her throat, her stance rigid, all senses alert. For a few moments, Luke lay winded, but Joss’s continued vigilance combined with her concentrated attention on the back door forced him to stagger to his feet. Stumbling to the door, he wrenched it open, peering into the dusk.

  All appeared calm and serene, but the faint whiff of diablerie came to his nose. Bastard sunderers. Luke would have hazarded half the contents of his shop that there had been one or more of the malus nocte standing outside only a few moments ago. The old Luke would have thought twice before action, but twelve months of study and a desire for vengeance had brought him the status of Dominus Elemancer, one who would not flee from any sunderer. He leaned over the fence, tuning his mind into the path his enemy had taken, preparatory to pursuit, but Joss had other ideas. She stood blocking his way, looking up at him with such love that he could almost hear her thoughts.

  “Aye, girl, you are right. Now would not be a good time.”

  He turned back to the house as Rob came through into the kitchen from the shop.

  “I’ve cleaned everything as you asked, Master.” Rob stared at him, his eyes narrowed. “Are you unwell, Luke?”

  Luke shook his head.

  “Just the stink of sunderer in my nostrils. No, do not fly to the door. The wretch is long gone.”

  Rob looked from Luke to Joss and back again.

  “Marry, boy, do I look that bad?”

  Rob pointed to Luke’s arm.

  “Those black smudges look like bruises. Who did that?”

  Luke looked at his forearms, which were mottled with fingertip-sized contusions.

  “This is powerful devilry,” he said. “I have never heard of physical injury sustained in a trance. Mayhap my first reaction to pursue them was right.”

  “I think it better you do not, Master.”

  “I will be fine. You stay and guard the house. I could put a protection spell around it, but there is little need to show them that we are aware of their presence in such an obvious manner or to give them outward cause to think they worry us.”

  A knock on the shop’s drawn wooden shutters made them both swing round. Luke gestured for Rob to answer the door and took up his place in the kitchen where he could hear unseen. If this were an urgent summons, he would need all his strength, and the recent encounter had tired him. If it were another dark challenge, he would have to trust to his wits and rely upon Joss and Rob’s unswerving courage and loyalty.

  He heard Gwenette Paige’s voice over a mumbling sound he could not identify. The tone of Rob’s replies made Luke hesitate to move. Was this the summons from the Queen Mother? If so, why had Rob not yet admitted Gwenette? What had the boy seen that Luke did not sense? He stepped forward just as Rob pulled the door open to allow their visitor to enter. Luke stopped short when he saw Gwenette helping a stooped old lady wrapped in a shawl against the growing chill of evening. She was the source of the continuing muttering. Still untrusting, Luke remained wary.

  “Well met, Mistress Paige. How may I help you?”

  Gwenette, eyes brimming with unshed tears, flashed him a brief smile.

  “Master Ballard. This is Goodwife Brook. She has had grievous news. Her granddaughter is dead.”

  Luke opened his mouth, but Gwenette, knowing his first instinct was to interrogate his patients, shook her head.

  “The shock has befuddled her wits. Can you aid her?”

  He contented himself with helping the old lady to the settle, feeling her pain and confusion and cursing the quirks of the sweating sickness. It would take the young, but pass over the elderly. His heart ached for the strength of her grief.

  The beldame’s hands were cold and her body shook as if she suffered from an ague. She stared at Luke but he was not certain she saw him. He finally identified her steady babbling as the old form of prayers for the dead. Luke felt torn between pity for her and apprehension at the implications of this visit. Gwenette’s presence indicated a link with the royal household. “Goodwife Brook. I am grieved for your loss. If I make you a soothing potion, will you drink it?”

  The old woman made no acknowledgment. Joss put her head on the woman’s knee, but again, the woman made no sign that she was aware of this comfort. However Luke breathed a sigh of relief. If Joss could sense no evil in the grandmother, it was good enough for him. He bent down and tried to catch the old lady’s attention.

  “Goodwife, can you hear me?” He turned to Gwenette. “I think you are right and the shock has broken her mind. Do you know her, Gwenette? It is difficult to identify her humor when she has been so badly shaken.”

  “I know her a little from when I helped mend the Cardinal’s tapestries.”

  So that was the connection with the palace. He glanced at Rob and indicated the kitchen. Rob took the hint, muttered about checking the small beer. When Luke heard the door close he turned back to Gwenette.

  “I will prepare something. Will you sit with her? It may take me some little time.”

  Luke hurried behind the counter, took rosemary and elderflowers, steeping them in wine. Turning his back on the two ladies, he summoned his element of fire, warming the bowl between his hands until vapor began to rise from it. Then he added a pinch of valerian, honey and, after some thought, specific quantities from two small jars at the back of his shelves. Mixing with a spoon, he poured half of the potion into a small goblet before walking back to the settle and handing it to Gwenette.

  “Try and make her drink some of this. I have another for you,” he said, allowing his eyes to rest on her ashen face. “You have suffered a shock, too.”

  Gwenette’s smile of gratitude would have melted the heart of a stone, but Luke merely nodded. He knew that Gwenette favored him, but the knowledge only made him determined that he would never give her any cause to believe that he returned her feelings. She was a friend, nothing more. Gwenette urged Goodwife Brook to drink the entire goblet before taking the one Luke had left on the counter for her and draining it.

  “Marry, that is delicious. No wonder I had no trouble persuading her to drink it.”

  Luke glanced at her face. The color was returning and her eyes, which had been dull with anxiety, were clear and sparkling. He might not return her affections, but Luke glowed with the satisfaction that he had succeeded in lifting her mood.

  Nodding, he turned to the old woman. She, too, seemed to be regaining some color and life. The babbling prayers had stopped and, apart from an occasional hiccup engendered by the intensity of her grief, she was calm and composed. Luke took her hand.

  “Goodwife Brook. My name is Luke Ballard. I am an apothecary. Mistress Paige brought you to me. I can make you a potion to take home that will ease your grief. Would you like that?”

  His kindly tone and open countenance loosed the floodgate of her tears, but these coursed silently down her face. She seized Luke’s arm, shaking it with each word.

  “She was my little Edith. Twelve years old and as sweet a child as you could wish for. My little po
ppet. I had her from a baby when her mother died and her father was killed working on the roof of the palace. She was the light in my life and now she is gone. My Edie. My babe. I am lost.” Her sigh was ragged. “I can scarce take it in. So proud I was when she began working for the new Queen. She left home so full of hopes and excitement. And now she’s dead.” Goodwife Brook’s voice took on a tone of pride. “She was a good girl and the Queen thought highly of her. The Queen Mother sent for me this morning and told me so herself. I heard it from her own lips, she spoke to me so kindly.” Then the depth of the old lady’s anguish returned. “What’s to become of me now? What shall I do? My little sweetheart. Edie, oh Edie.” Her head dropped and tears fell on Joss’s fur.

  Gwenette put her arm round the old woman’s shoulders. “Come along, now. I shall take you home.”

  “Nay, lass. You’ve been more than kind, but I want to be by myself. I need to be alone to grieve for my girl.”

  With a dignity that made Luke swallow and tighten his lips, she pushed herself upright from the settle and shuffled out of the shop. They stood looking after her in silence for a few moments before Luke put a hand on Gwenette’s arm.

  “Tell me what you know.”

  From the first mention that Edith Brook had been in Queen Madeleine’s service, his breathing had become uneven. If the sickness had reached the palace, it proved that the epidemic was escalating. But what did a maid-in-waiting dying from the sweats have to do with either Anne or himself? He indicated to Gwenette that she should sit, and placed himself on the opposite settle, hands on his knees, his blue eyes fixed on her face, counseling himself to patience.

  She shook her head at him, unsmiling.

  “Do not tell me that you have not heard all the gossip about the strange happenings? My mistress has done her best to quash them, but you know how rumors spread.”

  “I have heard nothing. My time has been taken up these last weeks tending poor souls with the sweating sickness. From dawn to the moment the sun disappears, I am working at full stretch. I have no time, energy or inclination for gossip.”

  “But, Luke, this gossip should interest you.”

  “What? The death of a child from the sweats?” He realized from Gwenette’s expression that his assumptions had been wrong. “Ah. Go on,” he said with a sigh.

  “First I must tell you that my mistress requires to see you, but you may not come openly into court, ostensibly because of the risk of contagion, but mostly because she must speak privily with you without anyone knowing. She will come to you tomorrow night. Make sure that you are alone.”

  It was as he had feared. So now he must garner all the information he could.

  “I am listening,” he said.

  “It started in the great chamber at Whitehall. About a month after the announcement of the Queen’s condition, the phrase ‘Thou hast been weighed in the balance and found wanting’ was scrawled on the wall. A page was dispatched to tell the King, but my mistress was staying at the palace to look after the Queen in her early days. She saw the writing and confided in me.”

  “A disaffected faction, no doubt,” Luke replied, clutching at straws.

  “That is as it may be,” Gwenette said, her face troubled, “two weeks ago, another such scrawl appeared. Luke, it was written in the same hand. This one said, ‘Let my people go.’ We arrived here yesterday to find those same words, again in the same hand, on the wall near the Chapel Royal.”

  “So, the perpetrator is someone who has regular access to the court and has come from Whitehall to Hampton. So much is obvious. How has the King responded?”

  “He ordered that the wall be scrubbed and painted over, the same as he did at Whitehall. The corridor is closed on the pretext of repairs.”

  Luke was more perturbed than he cared to show. There were always threats, plots and conspiracies disturbing the seat of government, but something else was making his every sense twitch in apprehension. The fact that Gwenette had brought the old lady to him must be connected to the Queen Mother’s secret meeting with her, but why would Anne Boleyn put herself out on account of the death of an insignificant maidservant? For the moment he did not have enough information to answer the question.

  “I don’t understand. What is the connection with Edith Brook?”

  “Oh, Luke. I haven’t explained myself at all, have I? The poor child was not ill. Last evening she went to fill a bath for Queen Madeleine. That’s what makes it so horrible, the fact that she was within yards of the Queen.”

  Luke leaned over and put his hand over hers.

  “I am here. You are quite safe. Tell me.”

  The memory of the horror was reflected in Gwenette’s expression. She swallowed and gazed into his eyes as if searching for the strength to say the words.

  “I was there when they found her. Someone had put her in the water and slit her wrists.”

  Chapter Three

  Luke had encountered Queen Anne Boleyn several times during the previous summer. Memories of each meeting only intensified his trepidation at the prospect of meeting her again. To soothe his nerves, he spent the next day making up new potions and pondering the circumstances surrounding the death of Edith Brook.

  He must find an errand for Rob to run, too. When his assistant had first come to him, Luke accepted the boy would need to be told about elemancers. Whilst he knew Rob would never give him away voluntarily, Luke also knew that should the lad fall into the hands of sunderers, he would be unable to withstand their interrogation. To circumvent that, Rob had willingly put himself under a Fidelis spell. If he came under examination from a sunderer on the subject of elemancers in general or Luke Ballard in particular, he was programed to utter the sentence of deliverance, Non timebo mala quoniam tu mecum es. At which point the lords of light would take his spirit into heaven before the sunderers could cast him into eternal darkness. The Fidelis spell was strong enough to hide any connection to an elemancer long enough for the prisoner to say the necessary words. If he was unable to speak, he had to think them three times, to represent the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

  Even so there was no need for the boy to know the identity of Luke’s visitor, for interrogations were not the sole perquisite of sunderers. So he made a short list of ingredients he knew Corbin used on a regular basis. He could trust to Bertila’s curiosity about recent happenings at court, the ladies’ latest fashions and any other snippets of gossip to keep Rob nattering for a few hours and out of the way. She would feed him, too. Luke envied Rob. Bertila’s cooking was delicious. Those few hours would be time enough for Queen Anne to elude the vigilance of the guards and bring Luke the bad news. The situation must be grave for her to come to the apothecary’s at all, let alone in such secrecy. Mayhap that was the reason his nerves twanged like rebec strings. He spent some time after Rob’s departure concentrating on his inner serenity chamber and renewing his energies near the warmth of the fire.

  * * *

  The knock, when it came, was so soft that he was not certain he had heard it. Joss glanced at him and stood up. As his visitor drew the hood from her face, Flute, the Queen Mother’s greyspring, trotted out from under the skirts of his mistress’s cloak and greeted Joss. Anne resumed her usual upright posture and stretched her arms over her head.

  “It is not easy to assume a bent back and still ensure that one is unobserved,” she said, wincing. “Rise, Master Ballard. If not old friends, we are old acquaintances. You may bring me a goblet of wine. We will sit in the shop. I do not wish to leave any trace of my presence in your kitchen.”

  “More people come into the shop than my kitchen, Madam. Surely if your presence were in danger of being detected, it will be in there?”

  “The mere fact that many people are in and out of this space each day will weaken any trace I might leave, Master Apothecary, or should say Dominus?” She smiled. “We do not always recognize our enemy, and should he find himself in your kitchen, he would pick up my scent. No point in wasting energy on unnecessary clea
nsing spells that might be detected.”

  Luke nodded. Her logic was faultless. It was also no surprise that she had kept abreast of his progress.

  “I know you will have taken precautions, Your Grace. Who would even think to look for your essence in my house?”

  “An enemy as clever as sunderers.”

  Luke said no more but led the way into the shop and gestured for her to sit. It looked as if his worst fears were about to be recognized, but then he chided himself. The old diffident Luke would have thought that, but attainment of Dominus status had engendered a surge of confidence. To his surprise, the new Luke found his blood singing with anticipation. Once they were seated, Luke leaned back and waited for Queen Anne to begin.

  “Gwenette has spoken to you?”

  “Aye. She told me of words on walls and the death of a servant to the Queen.”

  “I asked her to give you the basic facts of the situation. The whole story is more complicated than simple words and a death.”

  She paused. Anne Boleyn was skilled in presenting facts to say what she wanted them to say. Tension stiffened Luke’s leg muscles, and he could not help his mouth becoming drier as his heart beat faster. Taking a gulp of wine, he waited for her to gather her ideas and tell him the worst.

  When the Queen smiled, he recognized that she had divined his thought and wondered what level of elemancy she had attained. Female elemancers were not encouraged, being barred from guild membership, but this was no ordinary woman, and rules did not apply to her. Luke, aware that she was in close contact with Elemagus Dufay, head of the Guild of Elemancers and a powerful magician, had no doubt that she was kept informed and consulted when necessary. That in itself told Luke that her magic abilities must be more than competent. Though her position as Queen Mother and a woman put severe societal restrictions on her activities, the Elemagus would need to believe the situation critical enough to bring Luke into it.