The Dance of Death by Kate Sedley

door shut behind me.
    I lit the candle and looked around. My clothes, which had been thrown across the chair, now lay in a heap on the floor, and on top of the pile was my pouch. This had been freed from my belt and was open, the flap bent back to give a groping hand better access, and my breeches, shirt and jerkin had been turned carefully inside out as if to ensure that they contained no concealed pockets. Someone, I reflected grimly, had been searching for the Duke of Gloucester’s instructions, and but for my boredom of the previous evening, they would have been found. Thankfully, I blessed Timothy Plummer’s foresight.
    Something moved near my foot, and such was my state of nerves that I jumped nearly out of my skin. I spun round and lowered the candlestick nearer the floor just in time to see a mouse scrabbling wildly to find its feet, its little claws scraping the stones. It was acting as if it were drunk, its whiskers all wet, and I suddenly realized the reason. It must have been licking up some of the spilled wine and was now paying the penalty for its greed. But even as I watched, it staggered, fell over, twitched violently for a second or two, then lay still. My heart pounding uncomfortably, I crouched down and prodded it with my finger. There was no response. It was dead.
    I reached out a finger and dipped it in a half-dried puddle of the ruby liquid, then cautiously raised it to my lips. There was a slightly strange taste to it, but that, of course, could be nothing more than the taint of damp and mildew from the flagstones. It wasn’t in itself proof that the wine had been drugged, but the evidence of the mouse seemed to point that way. If a strong soporific had been used, it might well have proved too much for a little rodent. I ruled out poison. That would have been stupid, indicating at once that there were others anxious to learn of the duke’s intentions, others who suspected that my and Mistress Gray’s journey to France was a cloak for another, more secret mission. But thanks to my clumsiness, I had failed to drink the wine and so been alerted to possible danger. Nor were the unknown ‘they’ any the wiser.
    I picked up my clothes, laid them on the chair again and got back into bed, shivering with cold. If I caught an ague on top of everything else, I should have a few harsh words to say to Timothy Plummer. On reflection, I would have more than a few harsh words to say to him in the morning. I lay for a while, straining my ears, but I doubted anyone would risk a return visit, especially as whoever it was had probably satisfied himself that what he was looking for was no longer among my possessions.
    But why did I naturally assume that my visitor had been a man? It might equally as well have been a woman. I had been too drugged with sleep to have any clear idea of the intruder’s sex, yet a certain sense of bulk persuaded me that the presence had been male. But who? Who, apart from Timothy and the duke, knew of my secret instructions, and, above all, who could possibly have been aware that I was carrying them in my pouch?
    I had a sudden picture of myself the previous evening with the duke. I was saying something, something about ‘when I read what you had written’, and tapping my belt . . . And the servant, who had entered unobserved by me, was there, pouring the wine, the same servant who had insisted on accompanying me to my room so that he might know where I was housed . . .
    A Woodville agent? He had to be! I could at least provide Timothy with a description, although I doubted that morning would still find the man in the castle. He would slip out at first light to report his failure to his superiors, and if he had any sense, he wouldn’t come back. On the other hand, he might underrate my intelligence. Plenty of people had done that before now. To their cost.
    Eventually, I drifted into an uneasy sleep, a tangle of nightmarish dreams that