The Queen's Secret by Victoria Lamb

Author:Victoria Lamb [Victoria Lamb]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781446438985
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-eight

THE CURTAIN ABOVE her mattress rattled on its pole and Lucy sat up in shock, roused from a sleep so deep her dreams still possessed her. It was dark in the corridor, but the man who was leaning over her makeshift bed was carrying a lantern, as though he had come from outside. Lucy thought she recognized him; one of the Queen’s aides, a stocky man with greying hair. The flame flickered dimly inside the lantern, illuminating the man’s face.

‘You’re to get up at once. The Queen wants you.’

Lucy stared, still groggy with sleep, not quite understanding the order. ‘The Queen? But … But it is not yet dawn.’

‘You have three minutes to make yourself ready and follow me,’ he told her sourly. He hoisted up his lantern to illuminate her cloak, hanging beside her cap on a hook above her bed. ‘Don’t bother to dress. You must come without delay.’

The man stood discreetly aside while Lucy swung herself out of bed, sought for her shoes and pulled her cloak around her. There was not time to dress her hair properly; instead, she dampened it with a splash of water from her bedside bowl, dragged a long-toothed comb through its unruly length, and tried to press it down under the collar of her cloak. The Queen’s aide coughed, clearly impatient.

‘I’m ready,’ Lucy announced, pulling the curtain shut behind her. She followed the eerie swinging glow of his lantern along the corridor and down one of the narrow stone stairways of the keep. There were window slits at every turn of the stairs. Lucy shivered in the draught, and dragged her cloak closer at the throat. Outside, a ragged light along the horizon signalled that day was breaking. No other souls appeared to be stirring in this part of the keep.

The low wooden door at the base of the stairs led out into the keep’s arcade, a paved area decorated with white fluted columns and miniature citrus trees in large wooden planters. The man gestured her to keep up, quickening his pace through the arcade, the air fragrant at this early hour, everything still fresh from last night’s dewfall. His lantern was barely necessary now, a ghostly flicker as the sky began to flush with light above them. He led her down a short flight of steps and through a rose-covered archway on to a narrow walkway. Lucy recognized the neat herb beds and clipped hedges of the Privy Garden reserved for the Queen and her ladies, the great marble fountain at its centre spilling an endless cascade of water, the only sound to break the silence.

The Queen was waiting at the end of the lime-tree walk, pacing back and forth as though unable to keep still. Her ladies, wrapped in cloaks, their heads close together, stood huddled by the gated entrance, within sight of their mistress but evidently forbidden to approach any closer. One or two of the women raised pale, resentful faces as Lucy entered the garden, surveying her undressed hair and shabby cloak with disdain.

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