The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(26)
First things first. Whenever she was about to embark on a new course of study, Dr. Dee had taught her how to make a space for the information in her mind so that it was readily accessible whenever she might need it. Books are not always available, he’d lectured, nor other tangible sources of information. You must learn to store it all in your memory.
The first step was to conjure up the image of the library at Wynfield Mote. It was a small chamber—as everything at Wynfield was on a smaller scale than, say, Tiverton Castle—but beautiful with its coffered ceiling and ebony wood floor. The library was her Memory Chamber. The shelves in her imagination were not filled with her family’s books, but with tall quarto-size ledgers, spines neatly aligned along each shelf. Each ledger—or sometimes shelf of ledgers, if the subject matter was complex—represented a single subject.
Eyes closed, Lucette conjured up the image of herself walking to a previously unused shelf and taking down the first ledger. Then to the circular table in the center of the library, where quill and ink awaited her. She opened the cover and on the first page imagined herself writing THE NIGHTINGALE PLOT.
She did not have to imagine the actual writing—sometimes she did it merely for effect, occasionally to underscore the importance of how she felt about a piece of information. Now, eyes still closed, she poured out on the first pages of the ledger the information gleaned from Walsingham and Burghley and Queen Elizabeth back in February. The names of those she’d met in Paris; the impressions of the Catholic priests she’d seen along the way, friendly or not; and finally she headed a page simply CHATEAU BLANCLAIR.
Opening her eyes, Lucette stretched as though she had actually been sitting hunched over a table writing. Time to start snooping, so she might begin to fill in the next pages. Felix had given her a good foundation, with his thorough tour of Blanclair, but the kinds of information she needed would not come from a child. She would need to be visible, need to chatter to as many of the household staff as possible, and most of all be present with family members every hour she could manage.
She summoned the maid to help her dress for dinner and began with gentle questions about the family. But the girl—Anise—had only been here for a year, after Nicole LeClerc’s death, and had never even met Julien until now.
Not that it kept her from talking about him. “Felix is very taken with his uncle,” she confided as though it were a great secret, rather than something that radiated from the boy’s very being. “I hope for his sake Monsieur Julien behaves himself properly. Apparently he can be quite wicked in Paris.”
Lucette was torn between the impropriety of gossip and the necessity of investigation. “I imagine Julien can behave properly when he wishes. And there is much less scope for wickedness at Blanclair than in Paris.”
“Oh, yes,” Anise—who had surely never been farther than ten miles from Blanclair—agreed. “Though there is the Nightingale Inn in the village. Cook says it’s the first place Master Julien goes when he’s home. Hours he spends there, but he must hold his drink well for she says like as not he comes back no more addled than when he went.”
“Indeed?” Lucette said no more while the girl finished attaching her starched ruff of finest lawn. She was thoughtful as she descended to dinner. On the surface, Julien passing time at a tavern seemed perfectly natural. But a tavern called Nightingale? That detail, combined with the cook’s commentary that Julien did not seem to be especially drunk, had Lucette tucking that piece into the landscape of the puzzle she was attempting to put together. Taverns, she imagined, were a good place for clandestine business.
That night she set about being, if not quite charming, then something more than just polite toward Julien. And, to her surprise, he seemed prepared to match her attempts. She was seated next to Nicolas, facing Julien across the table. He had Felix on his left, with Renaud at the end of the table. It was she and Julien who carried the bulk of the conversation.
He seemed especially interested in talking about Wynfield Mote and the LeClercs’ long ago visit to England. He didn’t quite have the nerve to frame it as “do you remember how nice I was to you when you were little,” but Lucette was forced to admit he was ruefully charming in talking about her younger siblings and the constant crowd he and Nicolas had drawn whenever they had sparred at Wynfield.
“What I recall,” Lucette said, “is your father chastising you for depending on luck when you fought.”
“True,” Julien laughed. “I did have a rather careless attitude when young, but time has taught me that fortune may not always be wholeheartedly on my side.”
“And did you learn that lesson before your carelessness caused much damage?”
It was astonishing the swiftness with which his features changed. All at once Julien was as forbidding as he had been open before. But only for a moment. Then his expression cleared, if not quite regaining its former openness. “I am still here, at least,” he said. “And with a lifetime to atone for my former errors.”
No one else spoke or even, it seemed to Lucette, breathed. Through the thickening tension, she managed a noncommittal smile and then asked Felix about his Latin studies.
When they broke for the evening, Lucette was wondering how to ask what the men were doing the next day when Julien said abruptly, “Would you care for a tour of the valley, Lucette? I’d be happy to ride with you tomorrow around St. Benoit.”