“You think they’ll slip the poison in tomorrow?” Sally said. “If the cook watches the food as closely as Mr. Dencourt watches the wine, I don’t see how they wouldn’t be caught.”

That was a good point. Which made me wonder something else.

“How did the Templars know the king would be poisoned with arsenic?” I said.

“I thought the Templars knew everything,” Tom said.

“They can’t know everything. They might have agents in high places, but they’re still just people.”

“What are you thinking?” Sally said.

“The servant at Whitehall who was murdered, Mary Brickenham. She worked in the kitchens. What if she was killed because she saw someone doing something strange?”

“Like putting something in the food!”

“Maybe. Either way, Whitehall’s on edge now. So what if the Covenanters had planned to poison the king at the palace, but had to move their plot here, to Berkshire House, instead?”

“All right,” Tom said. “And?”

“Well… what if they don’t plan to poison the food the night of the party? What if the poison’s already here? In the pantry, in the powdered sugar, say. Then it wouldn’t matter who’s watching for danger. The sugar’s already poisoned. The cook will do the assassin’s work for him, without even knowing it.”

We stood there, struck by the deviousness.

“Come on,” I said. “We need to check the kitchen’s stores.”

CHAPTER 34

THE SERVANTS THOUGHT US ODD, going into the pantry. “Dinner be served in half an hour, yer graces,” one of the kitchen maids said.

I told her the master had sent us to check on some supplies. She found that dubious, but she wasn’t bold enough to challenge us. Inside the pantry, Tom went straight for the sacks of powdered sugar.

“We should take these,” he insisted, so no one could get poisoned, even by accident.

“Do you know of any way to test for arsenic?” Sally asked me.

“Only one,” I said, and I went back out to the maid in the kitchen. “Are there any rats?”

She looked at me strangely. “It’s lamb tonight, m’lord.”

“I… wasn’t looking for something to eat. I need them alive.”

Her look didn’t change much. “Always some in the storage cellar. If you can catch ’em.”

“Working for the king certainly is glamorous,” Tom said. He was on his knees, peering under one of the shelves near the wall. “Here, rat, rat, rat.”

I was on the other side of the storage cellar, my head to the floor. “I don’t think that’s going to work,” I said, looking into the shadows.

“Maybe if we trick them. Look, Mr. Rat, I have cheese.” His voice sounded muffled all of a sudden.

“Tom?”

“Yffgh?”

“Are you eating the cheese?”

“… No.”

I glared at him across the cellar. “You’re talking to the cook if we run out.”

“It was just a little piece! How much cheese does a rat need, anyway? I’m bigger than he is.”

“Maybe that’s because you eat everything you see.”