Maid of Wonder by Jennifer McGowan

Author:Jennifer McGowan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster BFYR

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It is another hour before the maids and I can gather again in our chamber. After our dancing lesson Marcus tried to speak with me, but I fended him off. I am too raw, too out of step to talk with him. Further, I have reached the limits of my tolerance for Walsingham’s disappearance. Once more, I sought out the Queen’s advisor, traversing the entire length of the castle. Once more, I was denied. The man may be the Queen’s spymaster, but he is also being insufferable, to make me wait so long. To make all of us wait, indeed.

If Nostradamus’s strange words do in fact hold the key to deciphering Mother Shipton’s prophecy about a death at Windsor castle, well, why shouldn’t the Maids of Honor use that information to either verify or dispute my own angelic vision? Whether I am right, or Nostradamus is right, or we both are right, I will go into the convocation of seers well prepared.

“Well, go on, Sophia,” Beatrice speaks up now. “You look like you have just eaten a bird. What is it you learned last night?”

Meg leans forward, and Anna clasps her hands together, her eyes mirror bright. Jane shifts onto the balls of her feet, as if she were preparing to do physical harm to any words I might speak that would put us in danger. Even Beatrice’s face is pinched with worry.

Walsingham ordered my silence, but it is not Walsingham who will fight alongside me, should the battle lines be drawn.

I release a long breath, then begin the tale that already has been etched into my bones.

“I scried last night,” I say. “The angels’ message was clear. There is not one, but two threats we must beware of at Windsor Castle. The first is an immediate one, a member of Windsor’s household doomed to die in his bed. The second seems further off but is far more terrible: the death of the Queen upon a field of white.”

Something subtle shifts in everyone’s demeanor then, bright and firm. The Maids of Honor recognizing a threat to our monarch. Unlike all too many young women our age, however, we do not flutter or gasp, or cry out in fear or worry at this terrible news. For Walsingham and Cecil have trained us well. We are spies for the Queen, yes, but we are also warriors. And warriors do not lament the terrible things that stand before them. They go about knocking those things down.

“White?” Jane speaks first, her words measured. “So, wintertide. We have some time to prepare, at least.”

“And a field means she is in the open country,” Anna says. “We’ll be in London ere long, and we’re not likely to find any open spaces there by the time the snow begins to fall. So perhaps not until late winter, or early spring.”

I nod, unable to dispel the strain I feel, despite their quite reasonable assessment. Just as with Walsingham, the maids have quickly driven to the heart of the matter.

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