the cooks for the stew.’
She pressed a sachet of dried parsley and rosemary into Alys’s hand and gently urged her through the door.
Bewildered, Alys glanced back before the door could close behind her. Her father went to the window, staring out at the rain beyond with his back to her, his hand clasped before him. Her mother went to him, leaning against his shoulder. Alys dared to hold the door open a mere inch, lingering so she could find out what was happening. Otherwise they would never tell her at all.
‘There is still no place for you at court?’ Alys heard her mother say. Elena’s voice was still soft, kind, but it sounded as if she might start to cry.
‘Nay, not yet, or so my uncle writes. I am needed here for a time longer, considering the uprisings have just been put down. Here! In this godforsaken place where I can do nothing!’ His fist came down on the table with a sudden crash, rattling the bottles.
‘Because of me,’ her mother whispered. ‘Madre de Dios, but if not for me, for us, you would have your rightful place.’
‘Elena, you and Alys are everything to me. You would be a grace to the royal court, to anywhere you chose to be. They are fools they cannot see that.’
‘Because I am a Lorca-Ramirez. I should not have married you, mi corazón. I have brought you nothing. If you had a proper English wife—if I was gone...’
‘Nay, Elena, you must never say that. You are all to me. I would rather be here at the end of the world with you and Alys than be a king in a London palace.’
Alys peeked carefully through the crack in the door and watched as her father took her mother tightly into his arms as she sobbed on his shoulder. Her father’s expression when he thought his wife could not see was fierce, furious.
Alys tiptoed down the stillroom stairs, careful to make no sound. She felt somehow cold and fearful. Her father was almost never angry, yet there was something about that moment, the look on his face, the sadness that hung so heavy about her mother, that made her want to run away.
Yet she also wanted to run to her parents, to wrap her arms around them and banish anything that would dare hurt them.
She made her way to the bustling kitchen to leave the herbs with the cook, hurrying around the soldiers who cleaned their swords by the fire, the maids who scurried around with pots and bowls. London. It was there that lurked whatever had angered her father. She knew where London was, of course, far away over the sea in England. It was home, or so her father sometimes said, but she couldn’t quite fathom it.
When he showed her drawings of London, pointing out churches and bridges and palaces, she was amazed by the thought of so many people in such grand dwellings. The largest place she knew was Galway City. When she went to market there with her mother, Father said London was like twenty Galways.
London was also where Queen Elizabeth lived. The Queen, who was so grand and glittering and beautiful, who held all of England safe in her jewelled hand. Was it the Queen who angered him now? Who slighted her mother?
Her fists clenched in anger at the thought of it as Alys stomped across the kitchen. How dared the Queen, how dared anyone, do such a thing to her parents? It was not fair. She didn’t care where she lived, whether Galway or London, but she did care if her father was denied his true place.
‘How now, Lady Alys, and what has you in such a temper?’ one of the cooks called out. ‘Have the fairies stolen away your sugar and left salt instead?’
Alys had to laugh at the teasing. ‘Nay, I merely came to give you some of my mother’s herbs. ʼTis the cold day has me in a mood, I think.’
‘It’s never cold down here with all these fires. Here, I need a spot of mint from the garden and I think a hardy bunch still has some green near the wall. Will you fetch it for me? Some fresh air might do you some good, my lady.’
Alys nodded, glad of an errand, and quickly found her cloak before she slipped out into the walled kitchen garden.
The wind was chilly as she made her way to the covered herb beds at the back of the garden, but she didn’t care. It brought with it the salt tang of the sea and whenever she felt sad or confused the sea would calm her again.
She climbed up to the top of the stone wall and perched there for a glimpse of the sea. The outbuildings of the castle, the dairy and butcher’s shop and stables, blocked most of the view of the cliffs, but she could see a sliver of the grey waves beyond.
That sea could take her to London, she thought, and she would fix whatever there had hurt her family. She would tell the Queen all about it herself. And maybe, just maybe, she would see that handsome boy again...
‘Alys! You will catch the ague out here,’ she heard her father shout.
She glanced back to see him striding down the garden path, no cloak or hat against the cold wind, though he seemed not to notice. His attention was only on her.
‘Father, how far is London?’
He scowled. ‘Oh, so you heard that, did you? It is much farther than you could fly, my little butterfly.’ He lifted her down from the wall, spinning her around to make her giggle before he braced her against his shoulder. ‘Mayhap one day you will go there and see it for yourself.’
‘Will I see the Queen?’
‘Only if she is very lucky.’
‘But what if she does not want to see me? Because I am yours and Mother’s?’
Her father hugged her tightly. ‘You must not think such things, Alys. You are a Drury. Your great-grandmother served Elizabeth of York, and your grandmother served Katherine of Aragon. Our family goes back hundreds of years and your mother’s even more. The Lorca-Ramirez are a ducal family and there are no dukes at all in England now. You would be the grandest lady at court.’
Alys wasn’t so sure of that. Her mother and nursemaid were always telling her no lady would climb walls and swim in the sea as she did. But London—it sounded most intriguing. And if she truly was a lady and served the Queen well, the Drurys would have their due at long last.
She glanced back at the roiling sea as her father carried her into the house. One day, yes, that sea would take her to England and she would see its splendours for herself.
* * *
‘That lying whore! She has been dead for years and still she dares to thwart me.’ A crash exploded through the house as Edward Huntley threw his pottery plate against the fireplace and it shattered. It was followed by a splintering sound, as if a footstool was kicked to pieces.
John Huntley heard a maidservant shriek and he was sure she must be new to the household. Everyone else was accustomed to his father’s rages and went about their business with their heads down.
John himself would scarcely have noticed at all, especially as he was hidden in his small attic space high above the ancient great hall of Huntleyburg Abbey. It was the one place where his father could never find him, as no one else but the ghosts of the old banished monks seemed to know it was there. When he was forced to return to Huntleyburg at his school’s recess, he would spend his days outdoors hunting and his evenings in this hiding place, studying his Latin and Greek in the attic eyrie. Making plans for the wondrous day he would be free of
