The Queen's Witch Read online

  “It isn’t my fault,” he complained, with a move that had my breath catching. “It simply won’t fit.”

  “You’re not really trying.”

  “I assure you, I am.”

  “Are you certain you’ve done this before?”

  “I do seem to recall,” he grunted, “a few occasions.”

  “Well, were you paying attention?”

  He did something that felt like it permanently rearranged my insides. “Was that better?” he asked sweetly.

  “You’re learning,” I gasped, rolling over and snatching the dress off the end of the bed. “Now, let’s see if this miserable thing fits.”

  Kit let go of my stays and stepped back. “I don’t know why noble women’s clothes are so demmed complicated,” he complained. “With peasant girls, it’s a shift and a kirtle and done.”

  “And your experience with peasant girls is extensive, is it?”

  He crossed his arms. “There’s no reason to be short with me, simply because the woman was a few inches—”

  “She was not thinner than me,” I said, gritting my teeth as I adjusted the tight bodice enough that I could breathe. “You didn’t lace me correctly the first time.”

  “My apologies. I thought this would go more smoothly if you did not pass out on the lintel.”

  I glared at him, temper high, until I found myself stuck in the folds of the cursed woman’s farthingale. “She must have been built like a boy,” I complained, and he sighed and came over to rescue me.

  “I admit to not paying close attention at the time. I was more concerned with not allowing her to murder me.”

  He was talking about the witch who had been working with the counterfeiters. She’d been from one of the English covens which had apparently decided that, if their own country didn’t want them, perhaps they would throw in their lot with its enemies. Almost the only thing he’d discovered from questioning her servants was that she was supposed to meet with a member of the Black Circle tonight.

  The idea, of course, was for me to replace her.

  Kit stepped back, eyeing me up and down, while I tried not to fidget. The low-cut French gown of deep red velvet was fit for a queen—a very small one. I was glad I’d put her stockings on before we started, because bending over was no longer an option. But the size wasn’t the main reason the get up was making me uncomfortable.

  “I make a credible lady’s maid,” he said, breaking into a smile.

  I didn’t smile back. “I’m not a lady.”

  “You speak as one.”

  “My mother was one of our healers; she saw to it that I received an education,” I said, sitting at the small table where I’d spread out the woman’s toiletries. “But my skills are not those needed to impersonate someone used to fine company.”

  “What type of education?” Kit settled himself beside the table, chin in hand.

  “I was a wardsmith,” I told him, sorting through the little pots. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn paint, but the dress looked strange without it. I pushed the one containing ceruse away; one of the advantages of being a redhead was that my skin was pale enough.

  “And yet you turned to thievery?”

  I looked up, bristling. “After the Circle convinced the queen to give them monopolies over our traditional livelihoods, yes! I can’t create wards or even sell the charms I’ve already constructed without paying them for the privilege. And I would rather starve!”

  “I meant no offense,” he said, passing me a pot of something. “I find your solution… enterprising.”

  My eyes narrowed, but he looked sincere. And he didn’t strike me as someone who worried overmuch about the law, if it inconvenienced him. He had helped me escape from prison, after all.

  I opened the pot and took a sniff, before recoiling at the stench of sulfur. Vermilion. “Returning to the point,” I said. “Lady Isabel was of noble birth. How do you know I won’t give myself away in the first five minutes?”

  “Because I will be standing at your side, playing the part of your nefarious vampire lover.”

  I looked him over. He had donned a black leather jerkin over a doublet of blood red samite and black slops. He looked sleek, dark and dangerous--until he smiled as if this were all a huge joke, and ruined the effect.

  “You could at least look a little nervous!” I said, setting aside the stinking rouge. “If we’re found out--”

  “If I looked uneasy, it would only help to insure that,” he said mildly. “Take it from an old hand--a little bravado goes a long way. Act as if you belong and no one will question it.”

  “They will if they’ve heard of the witch’s capture,” I pointed out. The closer it came to time to leave, the more I was regretting agreeing to this. Having the wherewithal to get Elinor away would do me little good if I didn’t live long enough to use it.

  “The Circle kept that very quiet, at our request,” he assured me. “But if challenged point blank, you can always say you escaped.” His lips twisted. “It will even be true.”

  “And if this man has met her?” I demanded, trying to darken my lashes with the woman’s expensive imported kohl. It was worse than the vermilion, I thought darkly, as it smeared everywhere.

  He laughed and wiped a thumb across my cheek. “You look like a painted Indian.”

  “I cannot believe women wear this every day,” I said, scowling. “It’s vile!”

  “T’is the fashion. They all wish to look like the queen—pale skin, red hair, black teeth—”

  I put the pot down. “She does not.”

  “Oh, I assure you, she does. It’s become quite the thing, to blacken one’s smile before going to court. In sympathy, as it were.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “And plucking one’s hairline back several inches,” he teased, as I reached for the brush. “To get a proper high forehead—”

  “I’m not doing that, either!”

  “Clear skin, natural blush, and white teeth--I shall be ashamed to be seen with you.”

  “Just answer the question!”

  He grinned at me, unrepentant. “He hasn’t met her. Angus Trevelyan is Cornish, but he hasn’t set foot on English soil since the late queen was on the throne. He was banished by the covens for dealing in banned substances in Queen Mary’s reign.”

  “What kind of banned substances?” I asked warily.

  He shrugged. “Poisons, mostly. He fled to the continent, and the Black Circle soon enough found a use for his talents. The rumor is that he’s risen quite far in their ranks.”

  “We’re visiting a notorious poisoner?” I asked, putting the brush down abruptly.

  “The best, from what I hear.”

  “I trust he isn’t serving dinner!”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that. His weren’t the kind you ingested. He typically fused them with an object, something worn against the skin. T’was said some of the more virulent needed only a touch to have a man screaming in--”

  He cut off when I suddenly bolted for the door. “He’ll have no reason to poison an ally,” he told me, suddenly appearing between me and the only way out.

  “I’m not an ally,” I said heatedly.

  “He won’t know that—”

  “He doesn’t have to! You want me to play the part of a coven witch—when he hates the covens!”

  “That was a long time ago,” Kit said soothingly.

  “What if he has a long memory?”

  “Gillian.” Kit let his forehead fall against mine. It shouldn’t have been comforting, but for some reason, it was. “What more could he do to the covens?” he asked simply.

  I swallowed. There was that. Whatever revenge this Trevelyan might have wanted, the Circle had already done for him. I didn’t agree with what Lady Isabel had been doing, but I understood it, understood the impotent rage behind it. The urge to strike out, to do something—

  “He was banished before she was even born,” Kit said softly. “And her fa
mily played no part in it. He has no cause to wish her ill.”

  “I know nothing about why they’re meeting,” I pointed out. “If they ask me any questions--”

  “I’ll handle them.”

  I stared at him, wanting to believe him—needing to. But I didn’t trust people easily, and that went double for strange vampires. “You’d better!”

  “I shall,” he said easily, leading me back to the table. “Your role is merely to get me in. As soon as we find out what they’re after, my people will do the rest.”

  “I don’t know why your people can’t do all of it,” I said, snatching up the hood that matched the gown.

  “We tried that in Portsmouth. It netted us a cask of fake jewels and two dead bodies, nothing more. I won’t risk that again.”

  “Let us hope there are not two more dead bodies tonight,” I said darkly, settling the awkward thing in place.

  “You look lovely,” he assured me. “They won’t suspect a thing.” I shot him a look he didn’t see because he’d gone to rummage through the witch’s trunk.

  “At least everything fits now,” I said, twisting about. The dress was stiff with embroidery and heavy from more yards of fabric than were in my whole wardrobe. But the ramrod stiff posture required by the bodice and the glittering, elegant folds of the skirt combined to lend me an odd sort of grace. I looked in the mirror and, for a moment, I didn’t recognize myself.

  “So it does,” he said, rejoining me with a suspiciously innocent look. I belatedly noticed that he was holding something wrapped in linen.

  “What is that?” I asked warily.

  “Her shoes.”

  I said something extremely unladylike, and he laughed.

  * * *

  Getting in didn’t prove to be the problem. A portly butler with a comically self-important expression took one look at the staff and became positively obsequious. He stepped back to let us through the door of a fine, half-timbered house along the Thames, not far from the ruined hulk of the Spaniard.

  It looked like the Black Circle paid well, I thought, gazing about at gleaming plate, fine Turkey carpets and vast, echoing rooms. But they were all dark, lit only by the circle of light thrown off by the gleaming silver candelabra in the butler’s hand, and the place was as silent as a tomb. The analogy did not improve my mood, and neither did the fact that we did not stop at a receiving room, as I’d expected. Instead, we were led straight to the master’s chambers.

  As with most of the upper classes, Trevelyan used his bedroom as a place for intimate gatherings of friends. And with only four people, we certainly qualified. So much for losing myself in the crowd, I thought grimly.

  But as it turned out, it didn’t matter. The faint iridescence of a ward shimmered in the air above a table draped by a fine cloth, its contents throwing off a thousand prisms of light as it slowly revolved. And no one had eyes for anything else.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?” Trevelyan asked, leaning over my shoulder, close enough that I could smell the brandy on his breath. He looked more like a tradesman--beefy arms, too-pronounced jowl and scattering of gray stubble—than the fearsome dark mage I’d been expecting. But there was an oily, slick feel about him that made my skin crawl.

  But I couldn’t argue with the sentiment. “It’s magnificent,” I said fervently.

  Suspended in the air behind the almost invisible ward was the most spectacular jewel I had ever seen. At the center was a gold mounted, square cut table diamond, easily half the size of my closed fist. Sparkling like fire in the candlelight above it was another the size of a quail’s egg. But neither held my eyes, because neither was the real showpiece.

  Of all the jewels, pearls brought the greatest price because they were the rarest. And of all the pearls, the one most prized by ladies of the court was the large, single teardrop that occurs so rarely in nature, but hangs so beautifully from a pendant. Hanging below the center stone of this necklace was the single largest pearl I had ever seen, easily the size of my thumb, pure as new fallen snow and perfectly pear-shaped.

  I’d never seen anything remotely like it.

  Kit squeezed my thigh under the table, I don’t know why. Perhaps I was drooling. But Trevelyan seemed pleased.

  “It quite took me that way, as well, when first I saw it,” he said. “Still does in truth. But then, they only managed to pry it out of the king’s hands a fortnight ago. Blasted man owns half the world, but do ye think he’d turn loose of the one thing likely to give him the rest of it?”

  “He was wise to be cautious,” the handsome Spaniard to his left said. He’d been introduced simply as ‘Señor Garza.’ Judging by the size of his ruff and the small fortune in jewels he wore, that was almost certainly false. But then, no one had questioned my introduction of Kit as George Dunn, so I couldn’t really complain.

  “His father wouldn’a been so timid.”

  “His father lost the Armada,” Garza said sharply. “His son would prefer not to lose anything else in these isles. And La joyel de los Austrias is a great prize.”

  “It’s nothing next to the prize to be won!”

  “Which is why you now have it.”

  Trevelyan shook his head. “T’wasn’t so easy,” he told me. “We had t’show him those demmed Venetian doodads that your lot intended t’use before he’d see reason.”

  For a minute, I had no idea what he meant. And then a vague memory stirred. “Murano,” I said, glancing at Kit. The island off the coast of Venice was famous for the quality of its fake pearls. They were so good that the penalty for selling them as real was the loss of a hand and a ten year exile. But Trevelyan didn’t seem to agree.

  “Glass pearls,” he snorted. “No disrespect meant to yer ladyship, but those scoundrels sold you a bill ‘o goods. You would need a glass eye not to know they was fake.”

  “I thought they were credible,” I said, remembering the ropes of black beauties in Kit’s little chest.

  “To the layman, perhaps,” the Spaniard said condescendingly. “But not, I think, to the queen.”

  “Aye. If there’s one thing the old harridan knows, it’s pearls,” Trevelyan said, getting up to refill my glass himself, as the servants appeared to have been banished for the night. “Particularly those. She paid three thousand pound for ‘em, back when the Queen o’ Scots needed some quick coin.”

  “I’m surprised she’d part with so much,” Kit commented mildly.

  Trevelyn shook his head. “Bargain ‘o the century it was; not even half their value.”

  “Nonetheless, when you consider how tight she is—”

  “But they’re unique,” Trevelyn interrupted eagerly. “Something that no one else has. That’s what hooked her before, and it’s what’ll do her again!”

  “But we cannot risk a substitution,” Garzas said, looking from me to Kit and back again. “After so long, I am willing to bet she could tell in the dark whether they were hers or no.”

  “Aye,” Trevelyn said amiably. “T’is better this way.”

  “And what way would that be?” Kit asked casually.

  “The joyel de los Austrias contains two named stones, La Estanque and La Peregrina,” Garzas said, gesturing at the gleaming jewel behind the ward. “The first is the large center diamond and the second is the pearl—believed to be the largest in the world. His Majesty’s father gave it to the late queen when he came to England to marry her, and she wore it almost constantly thereafter. Naturally, the present queen assumed it would be hers upon her sister’s death, only to find that it had been quite properly returned to the prince in Queen Mary’s will.”

  “Rumor was, she was furious,” Trevelyan added, grinning. “But she was also new ter the throne and couldn’t risk makin’ an enemy over something as trivial as a jewel. But she’ll not let it slip away a second time.”

  “I am not sure I’m following you,” I said, actually afraid that I was.

  “La joyel de los Austrias will be presented to the queen in open court, as a peace
offering from his Majesty,” Garzas said, with a twist to his lips. “And if her people manage to so much as see it before she snatches it out of the ambassador’s hand, I will be shocked.”

  Kit’s hand clenched on my leg, hard enough to make me wince. I didn’t need the hint; it was clear enough what they planned. People had been trying to assassinate the queen since before she even took office. There had been numerous plots to shoot her, stab her or foment rebellion against her; it wasn’t a great leap to imagine one to poison her.

  “You seem to have it all arranged,” I said, sinking my own nails into Kit’s silk-covered thigh.

  “Aye,” Trevelyan said, shrewd brown eyes narrowing. “But the question is, will the covens rise, once the deed is done?”

  “I…will need to discuss that with the elders,” I temporized, only to have him scowl.

  “None of that, now. You wanted proof that we can do as we say, well here it is. The ambassador will be here in an hour to pick it up, and tomorrow he’ll present it. A day after that, the country’ll spiral into chaos while the privy council scrambles to find an heir. She’s never named one—”

  “It is assumed by most at court that the king of the Scots will succeed,” Kit broke in.

  “But he’s in Edinburgh, in’t he?” Trevelyan shot back. “An’ like as not, he won’t risk starting for London only to have someone else named while he’s still on the road. He’ll wait to be invited, and while the court squabbles an’ he paces in his castle, we’ll have our chance!”

  “And once England has been added to the empire, I assure you, the covens will find themselves in a much more advantageous position,” Garzas informed me, leaning over the table. “We have seen how you are treated here, your skills devalued, your ancient knowledge wasted. But we will restore you to your past greatness. We will give you back that which is lost.”

  They were both staring at me, obviously expecting a decision. “I believe I’ve seen enough,” I said, my head reeling. “If the curse works as you say, my coven will be ready.”

  “And the others?” Trevelyn said sharply. “Ye promised at least three.”

  I hadn’t thought there were three intact covens in England, other than those which had buckled under the Circle’s demands. Or had seemed to do so.