The Hooded Hawke: An Elizabeth I Mystery (Elizabeth I Mysteries)

by Karen Harper

  The queen dismounted but waited with her guards while Jenks walked around in front, then came out to open the back door with the sheriff himself in tow.

  “Your—Your Majesty,” Barnstable stuttered. He’d obviously been eating; he had a large, dirty napkin tucked in his collar and grease on his fingers. He went into a bow that bumped him into the door frame. “Such an honor to have you here at my humble—”

  “Step aside, man,” she said, pushing past him as he stumbled back. “Why did you not come straightaway to tell me of your prisoner’s demise?”

  “I-I told your man Jenks here, but could hardly presume to come early to you with sad news, Your Majesty, though this does satisfy my suspicions of Naseby.”

  “But not mine!” she insisted, as she followed Jenks down the hall, with her three big guards trailing.

  “Why,” Barnstable called after her, “the man was obviously shamed by his guilt and took his life. I didn’t move the body but to cut him down, lest you needed to see the proof, and—are you wearing armor, Your Most Esteemed and Gracious Maj—”

  “Hold this man here, Clifford,” she threw back over her shoulder. She was getting angrier with every step as she gathered her skirts and followed Jenks down creaky wooden stairs into the dank-smelling cellar.

  “You’d best fetch a lantern,” she told him when she saw that the cellar was lit by a single rush light, which had almost burned down.

  “But to leave you with the dead man—” Jenks began to protest, then scurried up the stairs at the look she shot him.

  She stood over the poor man, a huddled bulk on the floor, then bent down and touched his shoulder. “Your queen rues your death,” she whispered, as if he could hear. “I shall find justice for you—and for my other servant who was caught in a snare perhaps meant for me or my captain. And I’ll see your boys are reared by some good citizen here.”

  The door banged open above; Elizabeth could hear the sheriff’s shrill protests before Jenks thudded back down the stairs. The lantern lit the small, square area well enough, once her eyes began to adjust. Yes, she thought, as dark as this got, she must strive to see clearly.

  “Ordinarily,” she told Jenks, “I would have you examine his head for bumps or bruises to see if he was knocked out before being hanged, but after he was beaten yesterday, I doubt such would be conclusive. That blackguard of a sheriff hasn’t even laid him out properly, but left him dumped here like a sack of meal. I’d like to have Barnstable’s head as well as his post.”

  “He keeps saying he’s giving his position up after your progress leaves, Your Grace.”

  “No, he’s going to have the post removed from him in disgrace before I leave. Meanwhile, I’ll ask you to check on Naseby’s person for anything unusual while I look about.”

  Holding the lantern, she examined the crossbeam from which still dangled the poor man’s strap from his quiver tied in a noose. She bent over Jenks to see that the quiver was empty now, either because someone had stolen most of his bolts as he’d claimed or because Barnstable had taken the last two for evidence. It was one of many queries the sheriff must answer.

  She noted that the things stored down here were not unusual: a bucket of turnips, a barrel of apples, and a wheel of cheese on a cutting block—with a cleaver stuck in it.

  “Are his hands tied?” she asked.

  “No, but there are welts on his wrists where they were bound.”

  “At what point were they unbound, then?” she mused. “I’ll warrant he was left tied until he was dead, perhaps with hands behind his back.”

  She shuddered at that image, of the man struggling as the noose was readied and he was hoisted up to be strangled in it.

  “But if his hands were tied in front,” Jenks whispered, “he could have hanged himself. Why keep carrying around that empty quiver,’less he planned to hang himself with its strap from the first moment the sheriff accused him?”

  “The question is not only about poor Tom Naseby. If Barnstable meant to leave him imprisoned all night in this cellar, why leave that sharp cleaver there so Naseby could cut his bonds or hack through that wooden door to escape? I wager the cleaver didn’t matter because Barnstable knew Naseby would meet his fate in a staged suicide quite early in his imprisonment. Ah, look,” she cried, and bent into a dusty corner to pick up a gleaming silver shilling with her own likeness stamped on it. “I doubt if this bounced out of a hedger’s purse,” she said, displaying it to Jenks.

  “Or a country sheriff’s.”

  “You’ve learned a thing or two about devious behavior these years in my service, haven’t you, my man? What do you think this means, then?”

  “Doubt if a coin worth that much would get lost and not found fast.”

  “That is, unless the person who lost it was in a rush or so well-off it didn’t really matter. Or unless it was part of a large bribe and so, amidst other coins, wasn’t even missed. Worse, Jenks, this coin looks new minted, and that means it must have come from London recently.”

  His eyes widened under his thatch of hair as she handed the lantern back to him, keeping the shilling tight in her sweating palm.

  “I’m going to have Clifford search the rooms upstairs,” she said in a rush. “I ask you to stay here with the body until I send a party from Loseley House to see to his burial today. And we’ll not worry that the sheriff protests an accused murderer’s being buried in hallowed ground, for he will be too busy answering Francis Drake’s questions in this very cellar of a makeshift gaol.”

  Chapter the Fifth

  When divested of Drake’s dress armor, the queen breathed easier, yet she still felt a tightness in her chest. From her privy withdrawing room window overlooking the back gardens of Loseley House, she watched Cecil walking under the grape arbor in deep conversation with the Duke of Norfolk. She had no idea where Drake and Sir William were, but at least he and Norfolk weren’t together. She could only hope that both of her allies were worming information out of those who secretly opposed her will.

  She heard someone at her door and turned to see Meg, looking as if she’d been rolling about in a haystack. Crushed bits of herbs or leaves clung to her tousled hair, and she looked most distressed.

  “Your Grace, Ned and I are feeding the two Naseby lads in the kitchens, for they came to fix the hedge,” she blurted, wringing her hands. “Gracious, we didn’t have the heart to tell them their father is dead, but he really is, isn’t he?”

  “He is, to my great regret, because I vow he was innocent. Meg,” she said, gesturing for her to come closer as she glanced out the window again, “I’ve sent for Captain Drake, but the moment he is gone, bring the lads up here to see me.”

  “By the back stairs? They’re a bit afraid.”

  “Aren’t we all?” she whispered as if to herself. “Yes, by the back stairs, though I’m sure everyone I’d like to keep their presence from will soon know they’re here.”

  Someone knocked on the door, and it opened again. “Captain Drake, Your Majesty,” her guard stepped in to announce, even as Meg darted out.

  Drake crossed the chamber and bowed adroitly.

  “I like how you can lose your sea legs when you are on land,” she told him as he straightened. “In short, a man I can trust who can adapt in dire circumstances is exactly what I need at this moment. I would like you to take two of my yeomen guards with you and ride into Guildford to stringently question the former town sheriff, who has just been removed from his duties.”

  “Stringently, Your Majesty?”

  “I believe he either hanged the hedger, Thomas Naseby, in the makeshift gaol of his cellar or let someone in to do the deed, and mayhap took money for it, too. I warrant the poor man was hoisted to his death by strangulation in a noose made from his own leather quiver strap. But I’d bet my kingdom that Barnstable’s too rocky on his feet to accomplish that alone, even with Naseby’s hands bound.

  “And,” she went on, displaying the shiny coin in the sun pouring in the window, “s
ince I found on the cellar floor this new-minted shilling, which I did not mention to Barnstable, you have much to work with. Did Barnstable pay someone to help him? Or, more likely, did someone recently in London—of some means—pay Barnstable?”

  “I see,” he said, looking shaken and yet still solid, a man of passions but power, too, she thought with approval.

  “My guard Clifford is there now,” she added, “searching the former sheriff’s house. He will let you know if he finds aught else that would be fodder for your interrogation. Yet I regret to involve you so, and if you would prefer to remain aloof from this, I will certainly understand.”

  “My own safety aside, I understand that my sovereign could be in danger, and I shall do all I am able. But best I have your man Clifford stay close, for if I get out of the Barnstable wretch that he knows aught of that crossbow or bolt that could have been meant for either of us …”

  He said no more but smacked both palms to his thighs.

  Not a hothead as Cecil claimed, Elizabeth thought, but one who knew his own limits and could control himself, and a man able to inspire others. Though loath to change the topic, she said, “You have been with Sir William, have you not? Have you any suspicions he would be so daring and devious as to parade us out to the little hillock for hawking, having hired someone local to shoot in our direction—perhaps even as a warning that went awry?”

  “Forgive me for speaking frankly of one of your nobles, Your Majesty, but I believe Sir William More is not clever enough to hoodwink me—or us—in that way. Except for his servants and his family, whom he orders about at will, I would wager he is a man better at taking orders than giving them.”

  “Yes, I agree. But taking orders from his queen or some other?” she mused, gripping the shilling and tapping her fist on her chin.

  “I dare say, Your Majesty, as for your cousin the Duke of Norfolk or my cousin John Hawkins,” Drake said with a shake of his head, “best we both reserve judgment.”

  The two Naseby lads looked not so much afraid of as awed by the queen, Meg thought, as she and Ned escorted them into Her Majesty’s presence. At least that might keep them from elbowing each other as they’d done on the bench at the table in the servants’ quarters downstairs. Now, in the queen’s suite, from which she’d sent everyone else out, they sat stiff-backed, side by side in a broad-seated, low lady’s chair, made for wide skirts and embroidery over one’s lap. Each took but two sweet comfits from the plate the queen herself offered as she leaned across to them from her matching chair.

  “So, your father sent you to patch a piece of hedge under that new-built stile,” Her Majesty said with an encouraging nod and smile. Elizabeth Tudor would have been a good mother, Meg thought, that is, if she could curb her temper when things went to pieces.

  “Not’xactly, Majesty,” the larger boy, Simon, called Sim, said. She and Ned had coached the lads to address the queen as Your Majesty, but, surprisingly, Sim was not as bright as the younger Piers. Yet the smaller lad wasn’t a bit practical and seemed not to separate the fanciful from the actual.

  “You see, our sire got hisself took by the sheriff,” Sim went on. “But the sheep squeezed through by the new stile. So I tell Piers here we better fix it for him. We’re’prenticed,’specially me,’cause I’m older.”

  “Could the shepherd or the owner of those hay fields have hastily put up the stile?” the queen asked.

  Sim shook his head. “Heard not.”

  “That was very good of you to try to help your father.”

  “Neighbor said he shot an arrow that hit someone, but he wouldn’t—but at birds,” Sim explained, his high boy’s voice almost shrill now. “He’d never miss. We’re stonebow boys, help his birding, too—not poaching, though!”

  “I’m sure you don’t.”

  Meg yearned to stroke the stubborn cowlick that poked up from Piers’s head. What industrious lads they were, learning hedging and shooting at low-flying game for partridge or pigeon pies.

  “I’ve seen stonebows with their double strings and pebbles for shot,” the queen said. “And I hear your father was a fine crossbowman.”

  “Still is,” Sim said. “But someone stole his bolts, all but two he was making, he said.”

  Meg blinked back tears. These lads had said their mother, Polly, died two years ago when the dreaded sweat swept through this area. She’d been buried in a common grave behind the church rather than in the graveyard. That’s where Meg was going to suggest the queen allow their sire to be buried, too. Wasn’t the queen going to tell them their father was gone?

  “When was this—that his bolts were taken?” the queen asked.

  “Four, five nights’go. Out o’ his quiver when he was checking hedges.’Course, he said the best bolts was’talian or Spanish, but cost too much, and never had none o’ those.”

  At the word “Spanish,” Meg saw the queen startle, then quickly recover. From the mouths of babes, Meg thought, for more than anything, Elizabeth Tudor feared that her own English folk who were Papist would side with the Spaniards to throw her off her throne.

  “Do you have any idea who built that stile over the hedge?”

  The lads conferred, whispering. “Don’t tell that!” Sim hissed at Piers.

  “You may tell me, Piers,” the queen corrected the older boy.

  Piers, who reminded Meg so of Ned for some strange reason, spoke at last. “Someone did it o’ernight. He’s strong for sure and mayhap invis’ble, too. Don’t know, but could of been that naughty fairy Will-o’-the-Wisp, what skips over hedgerows and disappears and befools anyone watching.”

  Meg saw the queen bite back a laugh. “But if it wasn’t a fairy, who else could it have been?”

  “Someone,” Sim said with a shake of his head at his younger brother, “who knows that hedges make the birds fly up and not skim the fields. That way they can be shot, that’s what I think. See, he wanted a quick way to get to birds he shot—maybe poached. So he used the stile for a place to steady his crossbow, too.”

  “I believe that could be it indeed,” the queen said. “I thank you for your help and warrant you will make a fine hedger and birder yourself someday, Sim Naseby.”

  “But I really want to see the world, Your Majesty!” the boy blurted. “At least far as the sea!”

  Meg saw the queen press her lips together hard and nod before she said, “I understand your longing for the sea. But now I want you lads to know you will be well cared for, though I have some sad news. Your father, who I believe was a good man and was wrongly accused by the sheriff, has died. I am going to punish the sheriff and have you stay here with my friends, at least until we can bury your sire and find a place for you here in town. Do you understand what I just said?”

  Sim squared his shoulders and nodded, but little Piers sucked in a sob. Before Meg knew she would move, she knelt behind their chair and put her arms around the little boy from behind. His body was trembling. He suddenly dug at the nettle rash on his arm, though she’d bathed and tended it. Meg leaned her cheek against his tousled head, and he quit scratching. The queen leaned forward to put her hand on each of the boys’ knees, but Meg just held on tight, so tight.

  A thought hit her hard, and she had to say it right then: “Your Majesty, whoever hacked that hedge or built that stile or shot that bolt might have a real bad rash of stinging nettle.”

  With all that’s happened, you surely won’t keep to your announced schedule to proceed with this progress into Hampshire,” Cecil said to the queen that evening. Courtiers buzzed outside the door of her privy chamber like bees, waiting for her to appear. Ned’s interrupted entertainment from last evening was to be held for safety’s sake in the great hall, though Elizabeth had put out word the new setting was merely to avoid the chance of rain.

  As if the walls had ears, though she had sent her ladies out ahead of her, the two of them spoke quietly and quickly as they often did in snatched bits of conversation when others crowded close.

  “I beli
eve we’ve beat this subject to death, my lord—at St. James’s last, I recall,” she said, and fanned herself in the overly warm chamber. “I am not canceling my journey into Hampshire.”

  “But the dangers to your person are greatly increased over what I counseled before, Your Grace,” he countered, gripping the high-backed chair he stood behind. “Hence, I know you will look at this with a more wary eye. Our next stay is with someone we can trust, but after that we’re into the frying pan again with a Catholic and Queen Mary sympathizer, and all the time you’re dragging Norfolk along, and God knows who else who wishes you harm.”

  “Cecil, I repeat, the bolt might not have been intended for me. And if it was, I will not be affrighted in my own kingdom by someone who wishes me to cower in terror.” She flipped her fan closed and pointed it at him like a tutor’s finger. “I will not become a prisoner and build walls between myself and my people. I want and will have again the freedom to wade into a football game, for instance, or stop on the road to speak with a rustic laborer who brings his children to meet their queen!”

  “That reminds me, Your Grace, you are quite certain you want to take the Naseby lads along when we depart on the morrow?”

  “I won’t leave them here where that pompous maggotpie Barnstable and those louts of his might harm them. Jenks will serve as temporary guardian of the older boy, Sim, and Ned will keep an eye on the younger one, Piers. Besides, I’m not certain I can pry Meg Milligrew away from the younger, who is grieving sorely over both his parents’ deaths.”

  “A transfer of affections for her?”

  “One I heartily approve of if it helps the bleakness of her soul. However, the transfer of affections which both Sir William and my cousin Norfolk have undergone to turn their loyalties from their rightful queen to Mary of Scots is something else.”

  “Yes, Norfolk’s wily at hiding his true feelings—or thinks he is. I just wish there were some way to get more answers about these two murders before we move on. But,” he added, holding up both hands as if to ward her off her next sally, “I don’t mean that we should change our schedule to stay to find out.”