The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(80)

He faced Julien, speculation writ large in his eyes, and said, “Walsingham wants to see you. The guards will take you.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t care to tell me why?”

“You suppose correctly.”

Julien whistled tunelessly, more to settle his nerves than annoy the guards. They marched him through the Richmond corridors to another in what he assumed would be a series of rather anonymous meeting places for Walsingham.

Instead he ended up being directed into what could only be the primary office of England’s Lord Secretary, an imposing chamber decorated to awe. Even Walsingham looked more substantial, the intelligencer in him subsumed by England’s premier politician and one of the two most powerful men in England.

“Wait outside,” he told the guards. When they closed the door behind them, he turned curtly to Julien. “Sit.”

Julien took a seat across the desk from Walsingham, wary at the anger in his voice. Walsingham rarely let any emotion show. Something was very wrong.

“What has happened?”

“A woman is dead, here in the palace precincts.”

“Who?” Despite himself, Julien couldn’t help the spurt of fear. There were lots of women at Richmond, there was no reason to think anything had happened to Lucie…

“The queen’s taster.”

Relief meant it took him a few seconds to put it all together. “The taster…Poison?”

“The queen,” Walsingham said repressively, “is perfectly safe. Clearly God is watching over her life.”

“That man you sent to search my belongings—you believe I did this?”

“I did not want to believe it. I have never wanted to believe you have betrayed me.”

“He found nothing, you must know that. Though I grant that doesn’t prove much. Surely you don’t think me stupid enough to keep incriminating evidence in my own chamber.”

“I had to look.”

“Fine,” Julien said. “You looked. You found nothing. So why are you speaking to me like you think me guilty?”

“We found the poisoner, with his throat cut, in one of Windsor’s less traveled wings. He still had the vial of poison with him, along with a single seal of command.”

Walsingham produced it from nowhere, like a court entertainer, and held it in his palm for Julien to see.

It was a scrap of paper, two inches square, with a coloured picture of a seal. Julien expected to see a nightingale.

But it was not a bird. It was a cinquefoil—shaded blue. Truth and loyalty.

Julien just stared, shocked beyond measure. His personal badge planted on the poisoner could mean only one thing: he was being deliberately set up.

“Julien LeClerc.” Walsingham rose, his black robes and chain of office settling around him like judgment incarnate. “I hereby arrest you on the charge of murder of an innocent and the attempted assassination of Queen Elizabeth. You will be taken to the Tower to answer for this and any other charges that may follow.”

Before Julien could think of a single thing to say—or how to make his mouth work even if he could think of something—the guards opened the door behind him. They were apologizing to Walsingham, but Julien understood only one voice—Lucette’s.

“What have you done to him?” she was demanding as she swept into the room, and then he was on his feet and turned toward her.

She was white-faced, but with fury rather than fear. Or maybe it was both. After one look at Julien, she turned her formidable focus on Walsingham. “What are you doing?”

“Arresting him for trying to kill Queen Elizabeth,” Walsingham responded flatly. “You should not be here, my lady.”

Julien waited for her to defend him, or to question him. To do anything except stand there and stare at Julien as though she were trying to read the secrets of his very soul.

But all she did was, at last, ask him softly, “Did you do this?”

He’d never thought he could be so hurt by a question.

But why wouldn’t she believe Walsingham? She had little reason to trust him.

And yet it was suddenly the most important thing in the world that she should trust him. The Tower, interrogation, the threat of torture, the knowledge that someone had set him up…all of that faded. Only one thing in the world mattered—that this woman believe him.

“I did not,” he told her firmly, even while the guards gripped him by the arms and prepared to lead him away. “Please, Lucie, you must trust me. I have never threatened the life of your queen. I would not do that to you.”

They pulled him out of the chamber, leaving him with the image of Lucie’s face, blue eyes wide and unreadable. He had no idea if she believed him or not.

—

Lucette had known instantly that something was dreadfully wrong. When guards draw away the queen and sequester her food and drink, one does not have to look far for the cause. She shook off Nicolas as soon as she could possibly manage, because from the moment she’d seen the guards surround the queen, her heart had been pounding out a single question: Where is Julien?

After a frantic search and the heart-droppingly bad moment when she’d found Julien in the midst of being arrested in Walsingham’s office, she made her way blindly back to her chamber. Ignoring her expensive skirts, she sat on the bed with arms wrapped around her legs. She knew she should be thinking fast and hard—indeed, one level of her mind already was whirring away at important threads—but all she could focus on was Julien’s plea: I would not do that to you.