Robert frowned. “I wouldn’t think so. The family were strongly for Edward, then the unfortunate Jane Grey. Been keepin’ to themselves since Mary took the throne, don’t hold with the Catholics, you see.”
Unease prickled her skin. “Then what happened?”
“The doctor stopped by several times over the next few weeks. He admired an eating dagger I crafted and asked if he could purchase it. I said that one was spoken for, but I could make him another if he told me what he liked. Very particular he was, too. Took quite some time to finish engraving the letter ‘C’ on the blade. Robbie was a dab hand with wood, he carved the handle with a lily. Then we wrapped it in oiled cloth and took it up to the manor.”
Brand set his tankard down. “Do you still have the dagger? C is for Catherine here.”
Robert nodded and hurried from the room. When he returned, he handed her a small, ribbon-tied bundle.
Unwrapping it with shaking hands, she lifted up the palm-sized dagger, tracing the intricate carving in the blade and wooden handle with a finger.
Tears rolled down her face.
“Oh, Papa,” she whispered, so heartsick she could scarcely breathe.
“He was a good man,” said Robert. “Gwen said they thought very highly of him up on the hill, too. Everyone, not just the nobles. Kind to all he was, no airs and graces. That’s why we were so shocked at what happened that day.”
“Tell me.”
“When Robbie and me rounded the corner of the stables on the way to the house, we saw him standing there talking to two burly men in the queen’s colors. Well, not talking, arguing. I thought that right strange, so I pulled my boy behind a gate…oh, Lord…”
“Go on,” said Brand grimly. “I know it is a terrible thing to recollect, but we need answers if there’s to be any justice for my friend, for Catherine’s father, for your son.”
Robert’s hands clenched around his tankard. “They grabbed him. One stepped behind the doctor, securing his arms behind his back and covering his mouth. The other pulled out a knife, and stabbed him four times in the gullet—”
Clamping a hand over her mouth to muffle her screams, Catherine rocked on the chair as her vision grayed, as icy shudders shook her body. Moments later she was pulled onto Brand’s lap, his arms tight like a suit of armor, her only protection from the world.
“And?” he said, one hand stroking her hair.
“So fast it happened,” continued Robert, “then they let him fall to the ground while one of the guards fetched a sheet from a cart. They wrapped his body, put it on the back of the cart, then drove away like the hounds of hell were at their backs.”
“But why,” Catherine choked out through the boulder currently resting in her throat. “Why did they kill him? What did they argue about?”
Robert paled, and she braced herself.
“It were bad,” he said, his voice barely a murmur now, as though afraid the walls had ears. “The doctor didn’t come here to tend noble ladies. He was banished from court because he suspected somethin’ about Queen Mary and had to cool his heels until she forgave him. But Linwood didn’t heed the warning. He wrote letters in his own hand to her other doctors, and they were intercepted. The guards were tauntin’ him about it.”
“What were the letters about?” said Brand, his acute tension clear in both his words and body. “King Phillip? Perhaps he is not the father of her child? Or the heir itself?”
“Linwood believed there ain’t no heir, that it is another false pregnancy like the first one.”
Silence hung like a shroud over the table as the words sunk in, but somehow the sounds of the room seemed much louder than before, the beating of Brand’s heart against her ear, the crackle and spit of the fire, even the bubbling stew.
“If that is true,” said Brand, and even he had lowered his voice now, “Queen Mary will be humiliated. Far worse this time. Her Spaniard has long sailed, and she is very old for childbearing. She knows it, the court knows it, and you can be damned sure every Protestant both in the country and beyond our shores knows it. This could end her reign.”
Catherine sucked in a harsh breath. “The country will be torn apart again. The only direct English successor to the throne is…”
Elizabeth.
Brand could scarcely breathe.
Several times in his life he’d felt fear like this, the dark, suffocating kind that slithered and gripped relentlessly and rendered a body near-useless. As a child, hiding in ditches to avoid hurled rocks. As a too-pretty lad, cornered in taverns by noble drunks. As a man, diving into a frigid lake to find his missing wife, and lastly, on his knees next to his mother’s sickbed, ordering her not to die.
They had to get away from Guildford. Immediately. Not for a moment, not in his wildest imaginings, had he considered that Arthur’s secret could be this explosive. The only way he and Carey stood a chance at survival was to flee to France or perhaps one of the Low Countries. In England they would be hunted down and killed with nary a second glance, along with anyone who gave them aid.
“We must go, Robert,” he said abruptly, and Carey scrambled from his lap. “Before anyone knows we were here and punishes you or your wife for it.”
Their host nodded and got to his feet. “Get as far away as possible. These are dark times, Sir Brandon. If someone so close and loyal to the queen’s majesty as the doctor could be murdered, no one else’s life is worth a farthing. For the bloodstained Tudor throne, they’ll do to you and Mistress Catherine what they did to my boy. They’ll do it to anyone.”
Quickly delving into his cloak pocket, Brand curled two gold sovereigns into his
