by Karen Harper
It took her a moment to realize that a commotion off to the side, which she’d thought at first was Robin’s Merry Men entering the impromptu stage, was obviously some other ado, for Ned, trained as he was to keep in character, finally turned, put his hands on his hips, and frowned. As if part of the fantasy—though it suddenly seemed a farce—Sheriff Barnstable stumbled through the leafy scenery of Sherwood Forest, dragging a man bound hand and foot. Two others, burly lads, entered, too, blinking in surprise to see either such bright lights or the assembled audience.
In the front row, the queen stood as Sheriff Barnstable evidently spotted her.
“Caught and questioned, Your Majesty, one Thomas Naseby, who is in possession of two missiles identical to the fatal one.” As if to prove his point, he held a feathered bolt high in the air.
“He’s confessed?” she asked, as she walked forward and took it from the sheriff. Yes, in the shifting torchlight, it looked to be the same.
“Not yet, but he will, for he was indeed at the perfect site on yonder hill to launch this weapon of death.”
Naseby was disheveled and dirtied by rough treatment, unless a man who followed the trade of repairing hedges always looked like that. She guessed not. He was bleeding from his nose and mouth and looked dazed.
Her first instinct was to instantly question the prisoner herself, but everyone was staring, and she didn’t need it noised about that the Queen of England subverted her duly appointed peacekeepers, nor that she personally solved crimes that came close to the crown. Besides, she wasn’t sure at this point that Naseby would know his own name.
“I’ll keep him close in my cellar’til morn, Your Majesty,” Barnstable announced with a bow, as if he were some sort of deus ex machina to end the play. “And then I’ll have it all from him!”
Elizabeth indicated that her guards should escort the men and their prisoner off the stage. The unghostly sheriff had made a shambles of Ned’s entertainment, but if Barnstable had bumbled into solving Fenton’s murder, she would reward him well.
Chapter the Fourth
The pounding on some distant door dragged Elizabeth from sodden sleep the next morning. She was shocked to see that the sun was well up. Though she had postponed the late-night Privy Plot Council meeting until after the sheriff further questioned his prisoner, she had found no peace in rest. She felt as exhausted now as if she had been up all night.
“Rosie, you let me oversleep,” she muttered to her lady-in-waiting, who was already up and dressed. “See who that is making such a racket at the door.”
When Rosie went out, the queen arose and pulled on a robe over her night rail. She shoved her wild hair back, then splashed cold water on her face from the basin. She could hear Rosie’s high voice in the next room, then a man’s deeper tones.
“Well, what is it?” she demanded, as her friend rushed back in. Elizabeth’s heart beat hard as she steeled herself to hear that the northern shires had exploded in rebellion or that Queen Mary had been sprung from the custody of Elizabeth’s man, Lord Shrewsbury. No, Cecil himself would have come to tell her that.
“He’s dead,” Rosie blurted. “He hanged himself.”
“Who? Not Sir William? You don’t mean Drake?”
“I can’t recall his name. That hedger who shot the arrow at you. It’s Jenks outside in the hall, and—”
The queen swore a string of oaths that would have made her father proud, then threw the basin of water against the wall for good measure.
Barely half an hour later, Elizabeth Tudor presided over the first full assembling of her Privy Plot Council in nearly three years. Cecil sat at her right; Jenks, directly across from her, because she intended to interrogate him. On one side of him sat Lady Rosie, and on his other, Ned, then Meg. Meg looked morose again, but at least she had risen to the occasion when her royal mistress needed her yesterday. Finally, looking curious but uncomfortable, Francis Drake sat on the queen’s left, wondering, no doubt, why he was suddenly included in this strange stew of servants and their betters.
“It has been my mistake,” the queen began, “to be lulled into inactivity in this matter of murder by the sweet summer setting and by a worthless local sheriff who cannot be relied upon any more than can Robin Hood’s ghost.”
No one so much as smiled; they all read her temperament well. “I intend to look into this murder myself,” she went on, “with the help of all of you—promptly and privily. Is there anyone here who cannot pledge me aid in this?”
No one stirred or even blinked. “I thank you one and all. Jenks, you indicated to me a short while ago that you were surprised that the hedger, Thomas Naseby, took his own life.”
“Yes, Your Grace. He seemed steady and sure of himself when the sheriff first spoke to him, afore he was manhandled a bit.”
“Quite a bit from the looks of him,” Cecil said.
“Aye. He was bloodied and bruised when Barnstable hauled him out of his cottage, so those men of his worked him over inside.” The big man hesitated, frowning, his fists clenched before him on the table.
The queen knew Jenks well enough to know he would have liked to interfere. She rued the fact she’d told him to just observe and report to her what happened. “Say on,” she urged.
“Nothing made Naseby waver in his story of not shooting the arrow. He insisted some of his bolts had been pilfered—all but for two, to be exact, Your Grace, and he admitted right out that he was in the area. Checking, he said, on a broken part of a hedge where someone of a sudden had built a stile for climbing over it.”
“Wait,” she said, holding up both hands. “When Thomas Naseby readily admitted he was in the area from which he could have shot that easily identifiable bolt, had Barnstable already cuffed him about?”
“It was those two men with him hurt Naseby, but no. Not yet. Admitted all that freely from the first, like he knew naught about why they’d be asking. Said he’d been out in the fields all day, so I can see why he hadn’t heard. That was when I was standing in the doorway of the man’s cottage, afore one of Barnstable’s louts closed the door on me and latched it inside, too.”
Elizabeth groaned but fought the desire to put her head in her hands. “Did this man have a family to—to live for?” she asked.
“Heard his wife’s dead but that he had two boys, though they weren’t about the cottage then.”
The queen saw Meg lift her head and turn toward Jenks; she seemed to come to life at the mention of the children.
“Your Grace,” Cecil said, “you are thinking that the sheriff was overzealous to please you, and the hedger may have well been innocent, matching bolt or not?”
“We’ve come to a pretty pass if you can read all my thoughts, my lord, but yes. Yes, I fear so, and I partly blame myself.”
“Your Majesty,” Drake put in, “if I may say so, a captain of a massive ship—like you commanding this nation—can’t always be at the helm. Your officers, so to speak, are expected to and must be trusted to do their parts.”
“Thank you—all of you, for your present and future support. We must move quickly now before we have more dead innocents on our hands, perhaps because they were snared in someone’s trap who only wants to harm me—or you, Captain.”
Ned put in, “If the man didn’t hang himself, that means someone else did, that is, eliminated him so he couldn’t continue to claim he was blameless of shooting the arrow. I hardly think Barnstable, bootlicker that he is, is capable of murder. He’d want Naseby to sing like a bird to you so he could get the glory. I’d wager he fully intended to question the man—of course, mayhap under duress—this morning.”
“I fear you’ve all learned your lessons of deduction far too well. Jenks, I am relying on you to go to Naseby’s cottage and find his sons. Rosie will give you a pouch of coins for them, and you are both to inquire who might take them in—or are they of an age to fend for themselves?”
“I know not, Your Grace.”
“Then assess it when you tell them tha
t their queen grieves the loss of their father, and that we shall try to keep his name from being tainted with accusations of murder or attempted regicide. Ned, you will come with Meg, Rosie, and me to examine the area from which the arrow was supposedly shot. Fetch my guard Clifford to come along, because I need protection and he knows the area from the earlier search.”
The queen rose; the others stood, too, as if dismissed, though she kept up her stream of orders.
“My lord Cecil and Captain Drake, I shall leave you here to separately inquire—through casual conversation, of course—what Sir William and the Duke of Norfolk think of all this. They may give naught away, or indirect questioning may implicate them. Besides, I do not want them trailing along nor using this morning for their own covert conferences. Tell my courtiers, if you must, that I simply yearned for a solitary walk. And, when Sheriff Barnstable shows his face here today—with egg on it—hold him until I can fully question him after I examine that gaol of a cellar he mentioned.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Cecil said. “But can you not simply send the others to report back to you and not go out yourself this morning? If indeed this hedger was innocent of the attack, someone is still about who can put a bolt in the middle of someone’s chest from over a hundred yards away.”
“I’ve made the mistake of letting others look into this, Cecil, and I can hardly wait for nightfall to search for clues.”
“I have a partial set of dress armor in my things,” Drake said. “It’s lighter than some, but it would deflect arrows, unless a shot came from close range. It would be too large for you, but if padded and then covered with a cloak, you could wear the breastplate and backpiece well enough.”
Cecil chimed in. “Your enemies are clever, perhaps desperate—and as yet unknown.”
“Yes, I warrant that would be wise. Drake, deck me out like a soldier, then, for this is war.”
It was such a lovely summer morn that if the queen had not had a murder on her hands—actually, two of them, she wagered—she could have almost enjoyed the walk. But then, too, Drake’s armor was a heavy, hard reminder that this was no primrose path stroll.
Yet as her tall yeoman Clifford, who had been in the haphazard search yesterday, led them upland through the screen of trees toward a large hay meadow edged by hedges, they did see yellow primrose and many other flowers, spilling from the base of the head-high hedge. Elizabeth noted cow parsley, hawkweed, and lords-and-ladies, and Meg lagged a bit to bend toward others the queen could not name. Prickly hawthorne, from which the hedge was mostly made by having its limbs cut, bent, and interlaced, was in bloom. Orange-black butterflies and buzzing bees darted along the plump, dense barrier while magpies and finches flitted here and there, and a kestrel sketched circles in the sky.
“I see the stile,” Ned said, pointing.
“We saw that on our first pass through this area yesterday,” Clifford said. “I just looked over it and saw no one, nor didn’t think much of it.”
“But now we know,” Ned went on, “it’s the one poor Naseby claimed someone had cobbled together and hacked partly out of the hedge. Jenks said that meant some sheep got out, so Naseby had to patch it, though he wouldn’t otherwise deal with it’til winter, when it was bare of leaves.”
“Be careful, everyone,” Meg said, coming to life at last. “I see stinging nettle along here. Devil’s Plaything, they call it, and for a good reason. It burns one’s skin and makes a dreadful rash. For some folks it’s even fatal—see, that’s it right there. Steer clear, now.”
It heartened Elizabeth to see Meg show some interest as she pointed out the delicate green leaves. “Bad place to build a stile with these nettles nearby,” her herbalist muttered.
The stile itself looked makeshift and shoddy, but it did hold Ned’s weight, then Clifford’s, as they climbed over and came back. “Get down,” the queen said. “I’m going up.”
She cast off the awkward cloak she wore to hide the armor, hiked her skirts, and climbed partway up. Peering over at the next field, she saw no more three-foot-high blowing hay but sheep and closer cropped grass. The rooftops of the village of Guildford were barely visible far beyond the rolling hills. She turned around and sat on the top step.
“Your Grace,” Rosie said, “you were shot at in broad daylight before, and sitting up there like a target …”
“And the sun glitters off that chest armor like a shining bull’s-eye!” Ned protested.
“I’m coming down. Ah, if I could only forget my troubles and be a country maid, I could reign from this crude wooden throne over this lovely piece of land and not worry for aught.”
She sighed and gripped the rickety banister to come back down. But as she gave one last glance at the scene of the great house and gardens below, and the breeze lifted the limbs of the trees, she saw it: She had the perfect view of the very spot where she, Drake, and Fenton were standing when the fatal bolt was shot.
“’S blood,” she cried, “this stile is a shooting platform and this hedge both a hunter’s blind and escape route for the murderer!”
Meg was grateful the queen had let her and Ned stay behind to gather some herbs along the hedge. She cut hawkweed, for tinctures for wounds or nosebleeds, and knapweed, which was always good as an astringent. She took some broad-leafed dock, too, useful for rubbing skin stung by the very nettle that grew beside it.
“Nice of the good Lord to give us both the bane and the cure side by side,” she told Ned, who was evidently anxious to get back to the house. He was standing on one foot, then the other, but she could tell he was also pleased to see her even momentarily content. Or was he eager not to leave but to say something?
“This lords-and-ladies is poisonous when fresh, you know,” she told him, “but if I’d roast the tubers, then pound and dry them, it’s good for all sorts of deconcoctions for irritated eyes, even handsome green eyes like yours, Ned Topside.”
“Best leave the poison stuff alone,” he said gruffly, when she thought he might banter back.
“You aren’t fearful I’d use poison on myself?” she asked. “No more chance of that than poor Naseby hanging himself—not a man with boys to tend. Husband, even when things have been the blackest, I wouldn’t harm myself.”
As if she’d said something seductive, he pulled her to him, and she didn’t protest that the herbs were smashed between them.
“Meg, Meg, I’ve missed you so, being alone with you—the way things used to be.”
“I know I’ve not been a good wife to you lately—since … But I couldn’t help it. I just can’t bear to think of us together like—like we were. Even after we had little Ned, we took our joys so much, and then he died …”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I can wait, but I don’t want to. I need you.”
“We can’t here—in the meadow. Ned, you said we need to get back.”
“If we lie down, the meadow grass will hide us. If we can’t here, we can’t for the entire royal progress. We don’t get time alone, we don’t live together. My sweetheart, let’s just …”
She couldn’t say she felt what she usually did with Ned, but she was happy to have him hold her. The hay and earth itself smelled fresh and sweet where they crushed it under their bodies. Still, she didn’t forget her little lost boy, even when Ned’s love embraced and filled her.
When it was over, they heard voices nearby and scrambled to cover themselves. One person howling, one perhaps sobbing or gasping.
“Where’s that coming from?” Meg whispered, picking up her knife and gathering her scattered herbs.
“Can’t tell. But it’s tormented, disembodied voices—”
“Stuff and nonsense. It’s hardly your ghostly Robin Hood.”
They were barely to their feet when two heads popped over the hedge at the top of the stile—two lads, one a bit bigger than the other, shouting boyish variations of “Ow, it smarts!”
“Oh!” the larger boy said when he saw them. “We got to patch the hole in the hed
ge. Our father’s the hedger, but he been took’way for now, and we got ourself stung up by some bugs or bees we din’t see.”
Ned and Meg gawked up at the lads and then glanced at each other. It had to be poor Tom Naseby’s sons, and they didn’t know their sire was dead.
“You come on down here,” Meg said. “I’ll just bet you’ve rubbed against stinging nettle. I’ve got something that will help with that right here. Come on, then.”
They came up, over, and down, burdened with a bundle of limbs and, clanking together, a billhook, a handsaw, and two stonebows, the kind used to kill small birds for pies.
“Now put all that down and let Mistress Meg tend to you,” Ned told them. “Then we’ll go to meet the queen.”
The taller boy looked like he’d argue, but the shorter one seemed in awe of Ned. “You mean the real queen come to visit or the fairy queen, Titania of the forest?” the smaller lad asked. “She flits about with Robin Goodfellow and Will-o’-the Wisp near hedgerows, you know.”
The bigger boy frowned and elbowed the smaller to shut his mouth. Meg just shook her head. A dreamer of fancies like Ned, that little one was.
She blinked back tears as she tended to the lads, rubbing fresh dock leaves on the red rashes on their hands and arms. These two had no notion they were orphans now, or that they were about to testify before the Queen of England to help clear their father’s name. Her heart went out to them so strong that, for the first time in two months, she forgot for a moment that she’d lost her own little boy.
It was nearly noon when the queen, Jenks, and three guards, over Sir William’s protests, rode two miles into Guildford to Sheriff Barnstable’s house. The town was charming, she thought, with prettily thatched, half-timbered houses newly whitewashed and a village green bedecked, no doubt, in her honor. Jenks rode the back way to the sheriff’s cottage, its lawn abutting a pond with noisy ducks.