The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(76)
She could not allow herself to think about Julien. The terrible starkness with which he had made his last farewell in her bedchamber haunted her. But she would not break. She had set herself a task and she would finish it. No matter the cost.
Although she had hoped to find Pippa in residence with Anabel at court, she was resigned when told the two of them had gone ahead to Wynfield Mote. Her little sister’s wisdom would have to wait. For now, Lucette appropriated a maid and had herself dressed in the same plum-coloured gown she had worn the night she met Julien in Paris.
Then she drew a deep breath and presented herself to the queen.
Elizabeth met her in her presence chamber, though the elegant space might have seemed too large for simply herself, Walsingham, and Lucette. But no chamber that Elizabeth inhabited could be too large, for she fit herself to every surrounding. As Lucette executed a heartfelt curtsey, she was swept by a genuine feeling of humility and thankfulness for England’s ruler, a reminder that the Nightingale Plot was not an intellectual puzzle but a matter of life and death. It sobered her, and tempered her previous irritation with Walsingham’s lies.
After a frank appraisal, Elizabeth said, “You do not seem to have materially suffered on your journey. It might even be thought that France agreed with you. France…or at least a Frenchman or two. Dr. Dee tells us Nicolas LeClerc has all but claimed you for himself. What have you to say to that?”
Perhaps it was possible to be appreciative and irritated at the same time. Lucette said carefully, “Surely the more pressing question is what I have learned of the Nightingale Plot.”
“And does not that have something to do with a specific Frenchman?”
“It does.”
“Care to tell us which one?” Elizabeth probed. At her side, Walsingham had not moved his fixed gaze from Lucette, as though reading her every expression for truth.
Lucette turned her own gaze to his. “First, I should like the Lord Secretary to explain why he lied to me by omission. Why did you not tell me that Julien LeClerc is in your employ?”
“Because I was—and am—not certain that he is only in my employ. Indeed, technically he is not in my employ at all, as he has never accepted a single pence from England. In the last eight years, he has provided good intelligence and helped save the lives of many Huguenots by diverting them here. He has done so by maintaining contacts within various Catholic conspiracies in France, and thus can never be wholly trusted. How do I know he is not playing me for the benefit of his French friends?”
“It was critical information. By omitting it, you made my job harder.”
“By omitting it, I left you able to observe what was actually happening rather than what your prejudices might make you believe was happening. I have kept Her Majesty alive for more than twenty years now—I know what I am doing.”
Since a fit of pique would get her nothing but a reputation for stamping her feet like a spoiled child, Lucette acknowledged his explanation with a curt nod.
“Now,” Walsingham leaned forward, “what did you learn of Nightingale and the connection to Blanclair?”
“How much detail would you like?”
Elizabeth spoke sharply. “We would hear it all.”
And so Lucette talked, much as she had at Blanclair to Dr. Dee. The queen kept her standing the entire time. She began with the cardinal with whom she’d seen Julien speaking that first night at the Paris reception, through her initial days at Blanclair and her impressions of the key players in the household—from Felix’s hostile tutor to the slightly too familiar groom who spent long periods away from the chateau—her search of the family’s personal spaces, up until the night she went to the inn and found Julien with the English Catholic courier.
Only then did she pause, not so much for effect as to make sure she didn’t get lost in her own flow of words and spill out everything personal that had followed between her and Julien.
“After he discovered me in the inn that night,” she said carefully, “I fell ill and spent the next few days confined to my chamber. On the day after I emerged, the body of that same messenger was discovered on Blanclair’s grounds. Just one day earlier, Julien had informed me that he himself had been working with England since 1572. In light of those two events, I began to reconsider the information I had gathered thus far.”
“And would you care to share your conclusions?” Walsingham drawled.
“The dead courier had a badge carved with a nightingale on his person. Julien gave it to me.”
“You think that clears him?” Walsingham asked.
“Why would he give it to me, when he knew I was looking for connections to Nightingale?”
“Precisely because he knew you were looking. Sometimes it’s wise to preempt any discoveries that an enemy might make. That does not prove innocence.”
“It doesn’t prove guilt, either,” she shot back.
“Do I detect a wish to prove Julien’s innocence?”
“You told me when you asked me to do this that you would be just as glad for Blanclair to be cleared of involvement as to discover their guilt. Did you speak truly?”
“Why do I think you are uncomfortable with your own defense?”
For the first time, not caring what weakness she revealed, Lucette looked away from both queen and intelligencer. Beating in her head was that damning message from Anise and the fragment of the Spanish letter with it. She had told not a soul of either. At this point, it was more than instinct guiding her. It was fear. She did not trust anyone to understand the whole of the puzzle as she did. Walsingham and the queen had not been at Blanclair. They had not felt the pressure of secrets and hatred beneath the surface. They would have no reason not to believe the maid’s evidence against Julien.